


bleeding across state lines

by deepandlovelydark



Series: count to ten and run for cover [3]
Category: Il buono il brutto il cattivo | The Good The Bad and The Ugly (1966)
Genre: Abandonment Issues, Alternate Universe - 1970s, Angel's Leather Gloves, Assassins & Hitmen, Blondie's...whatever, Card Games, Catholic, Catholic Character of Color, Con Artists, Hispanic Character, Inappropriate Humor, Internalised Racism, Kink, Multi, Polyamory Negotiations, Tuco's Duluth Bag, Voyeurism, also using racism as a tool to scam racists, hustles, other exciting frivolities to follow, tagging is hard, the sigil for a hierarchical star
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-11
Updated: 2019-04-21
Packaged: 2019-10-26 03:40:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 21,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17738321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deepandlovelydark/pseuds/deepandlovelydark
Summary: It's 1974, or thereabouts. Tuco and Blondie have been running a sweet little hustle for a few years now, playing poker on an eternal road-trip.Always staying just one step ahead of the law; but eventually, their past catches up with them.(Their past goes by the name of Angel Eyes.)





	1. west of the Mississippi, east of California

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sybilius](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sybilius/gifts).



> Inspired by conversations with ladyrose, and also my lovely and indefatigable commentator sybilius.

“ _Badlands_ ,” Blondie says, holding the grey film can easily, as if it weighs no more than a dream; and Tuco privately seethes. 

They’ve been so careful about this little hustle, never entering a town together or winning too much from the same people. Blondie will show up at a bar’s back room first, play a few hands, let everyone there get a sense of him as a discreet, careful player, with a damn-near perfect poker face. 

Enter the sucker: one loud-mouthed, louder-dressed Mexican, twirling a mustache and flashing a roll (hundreds, wrapped around ones). Sometimes the other players will play it straight, and those nights they more or less break even. Other times, well…maybe he takes his time ordering the tequila, and gets to the table to find too many smiles, quiet sniggers behind the cards. And a couple too-good-to-be-true rounds to be sure of roping him in, with Blondie betting the most. 

So he wins those, and takes all the money, and tells them he’s quitting while he’s ahead. With a free round of tequila for everybody, to show there’s no hard feelings. If that’s not good enough, he has his gun; and there’s always Blondie’s if the situation got serious. So far they haven’t needed either, because the hustle they sell is never about the money. It’s something better, even more important, for the kind of men who hate the border and everything from south of it. Giving them the chance to look down on this cringing, incredibly superstitious foreigner who’d obviously love to play on, but  _santa maria, the Virgin Mary, she whispers in my ear and tells me no, go home now…_  

(a joke in many layers; he’s from Brooklyn, not romantic Sonora, but even Blondie doesn’t know that part. There might be less dangerous ways of making a living; but none that won’t be just as insulting, Tuco figures. And the hours suit him fine.) 

Only apparently their reputation’s preceded them this time, because there’s no reason on earth that Bill Carson would  _just so happen_ to have a hot film print sitting in the trunk of his car. Blondie’s got next to no vices that Tuco’s ever noticed, but every man needs a couple, and his are Westerns. 

“Adequate stakes?“ Carson asks, with a hopeful, driving need in his voice- the jitteriness of a barely controlled addict, on something stronger than the whiskey he’s gulping like coke. Maybe there’s something to work with, then. If the stakes were worth it. 

“An old film,” Tuco says dismissively. “You tell me what I want with an old film, eh?”

“ _Badlands_  is New Hollywood,” Blondie says, not letting go to Carson’s pleading tug. “They’d never made anything like this before.”

Now that’s simply not true, Tuco’s well aware; he can date and place their progress across the country simply by what movie was playing when. 1967, Texas,  _Bonnie and Clyde_. 1968, Colorado, and such a handsome bastard in  _Ace High._ By 1969 they’d reached Las Vegas in time for  _Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid_ , and spent more time sneaking into theatres than counting cards, the way he remembers it. There have been plenty such films before. 

Then again, he doesn’t know what it is that Blondie’s looking for, every time they sit before that silver screen and watch the pictures flickering by. To him they’re just a tolerable way to pass the time, a chance to rest his feet and fill his belly with hot buttered popcorn; but for Blondie, movies are meat and drink and eucharist all rolled into one, a gaping hole in the world’s tightly woven net, a wound that leads out somewhere that everything is upside-down, and their petty struggles for one more win, the indifferent hamburgers at forgettable lunch counters, sweaty nights at plastic-wrapped motels, all become the stuff of legend. 

But Blondie does have such a fine poker face; and that makes it worthwhile putting up with his foibles. “All right, all right,” Tuco says, a little more impatiently than usual; and lays down the covering stake. 

They win. Of course they win; and Bill Carson watches them take his prize with a strange kind of satisfaction, a relish that makes Tuco’s flesh prickle. All gamblers say they’re in it to win; not all of them are, though, and it fills him with unease when they play a man who begs the world to take everything he has. 

“Fucker had it coming,” he says afterwards, in the night-cold air of the alley (desert air is cruel like that, he’d discovered early on, while pretending that he’d known it all along). “But no match for us, eh Blondie?”

That’s breaking ranks. Even now, standing in front of the battered station wagon that will lead them to the next town, and another and another, they are not supposed to talk of their connection- but Blondie merely shoves an elbow into his ribs, a lackluster motion with no energy behind it. Talking’s no use, the man’s transfixed. 

Tuco curses under his breath, lights a cigarette to warm his hands and curb frustrated appetites. They’d plotted this one for weeks, planning and quarreling by turns, how to dupe the famous spendthrift Carson. He’d been dreaming of a month of steak dinners, real hotels with pile carpeting, enough money to let them rest a while and not have to do any thinking at all. 

Instead they were taken in themselves, just as broke today as they were yesterday. Head muzzy from too much tequila and his stomach crying out with hunger. He has to be drunk, Tuco concludes, or he’d never have let Blondie dictate terms; not when they could have held out for money or a car or something  _practical_ , not a damned film that they can’t even watch.

(Briefly, he envisions reaching out and pulling the narrow length of Blondie’s black necktie into a choking knot; and the image fills him with too much bleak satisfaction.)

“You there,” somebody calls. Standing at the edge of the alley, where the street lights can outline his silhouette to maximum effect; it’s a nice theatrical gesture, Tuco notes, and tucks that one away in his memory for later.  

“You want us to put out, you’d better be prepared to pay up!” If that won’t get Blondie’s attention, nothing will. It doesn’t. 

The interloper comes closer, and Tuco recognises him now; the fourth member of their poker quartet, the one who’s spoken even less than Blondie. His mouth moves more than Blondie’s, but his eyes are just as verboten. “I have something you two might be interested in.”

“We’re not,” Blondie says, dropping the precious film into his game bag; and Tuco watches him move it from hand to hand, ready to toss onto a soft bulging trash pile if the situation degenerates into a fight. 

Angel Eyes smiles, at the both of them, and Tuco wishes he wouldn’t. “I have a projector. Someplace quiet to watch it, too. Sounds to me like we need each other.”

Blondie considers, pronounces. “Done.”

“Hang on here,” Tuco says, more for the sake of the protest than anything else. “Blondie, it’s late, this is new territory for us. We need to find somewhere to sleep tonight, get our bearings and pick up some dinner.”

“I’ll take care of that,”  Angel Eyes says, an offer that’s halfway to a command. “Only fair recompense.”

“Do us both good,” Blondie says, now staring at Angel Eyes with that same lust he’d just been lavishing on a second-hand film can; and Tuco does not ask himself the source of that sudden raging heat that grips his body tight. Doesn’t ask what it means for their unspoken trust, if someone else can wedge a way between him and Blondie; doesn’t ask himself how long this deal with a devil can be expected to last, or how it’ll end. 

All he allows himself to know is that he’s warm now, and somebody’s offered them dinner, and just now, there’s nothing more he wants out of life. 

“Tuco will probably fall asleep, but never mind that, I’ll wake him up if he starts snoring,” Blondie says. 

There’s a flicker in Angel’s expression, then. “For a poker player, you sure don’t pick up on tells.” 

_wouldn’t it be just my luck, to be the bystander in a tale of love at first sight?_

_“_ It’s your call, Blondie,” Tuco says, letting the tension drip into his shaking voice (it’s cheap, and he’d make himself a damn sight cheaper, to hold what he has). “Who are you spending the night with, huh?”

“Who’s to say I can’t spend it with both you idiots?“

“And where do you get off,” Angel Eyes asks. “Calling me an idiot?”

“If you weren’t, you’d have won the film yourself and we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” Blondie says. He takes one of his little cigars from a shirt pocket, lights and inhales. 

Not with the slightest trace of desire. There’s a devastating, effortless charm to it, the glorious self-sufficiency of a man who wants absolutely nothing from life, and will never need to ask. Illusion, the ideal poker face, perfect and complete. 

Tuco sucks in a breath at the sight, same as he always does; besides him, simultaneously, Angel Eyes does precisely the same. 

They don’t even need to look at each other, to share the next inexorable thought. 

_That one’s going to be trouble._


	2. the villa

Most people look like dopes when they’re asleep, but Blondie never does; there’s a gentleness about him then, an innocence so contrived that it looks like he’s feigning even in sleep. Also, he doesn’t snore. 

It’s one of the accidental, unspoken truths that made their partnership work, one cog in the machinery that’s meshed them together. After a childhood crammed into a collapsing Brooklyn tenement, more kids than sense and more names than either, Tuco’s promised himself to never,  _ever_ share a room with a man who sleeps harder than he does. Or a station wagon, for that matter. 

“He looks very fragile, asleep on my couch that way,” Angel Eyes says, gazing with intent. Him on one side, Tuco on the other, Blondie in the middle and close enough to touch, if either of them dared. “Breakable.“

“So what do you do?” Tuco asks, to change the subject. Most people are only too happy to spill their guts out, given half a chance; most poker players know better, but the gaps will be instructive. 

“I’m an assassin for hire.”

That’s not changing the subject at  _all,_ and Tuco can’t help choking on the bittersweet rum runner he’s been nursing _._

“Cheer up,” Angel Eyes says, patting him on the back with deliberate familiarity. “Nobody thinks you’re worth a bounty, and I don’t kill a man without a price tag.”

“Ohh…great,” Tuco manages, through coughing fits. “Wonderful news.”

“Usually.”

And the only thing keeping Tuco in the room at that point, is the strong notion that he’d never make it to the door. This is bluffing on an scale he’s never dreamed, or else it isn’t bluffing at all, and either way bodes very badly indeed. 

Just when he’d been starting to relax, that’d been his mistake. This fine ranch house, with its terracotta tiles and baroque stucco; the kind of house he’d own, if he were the wealthy high-roller he pretends to be. All wasted on this one man, living here alone. 

Angel Eyes had made a point of mentioning that, as they’d driven through the gate; and to do Blondie eternal credit, he hadn’t reacted at all.

But it’d been such a pleasant evening. A good, satisfying meal of pork and  _mole poblano_ , with crispy  _chicharróns_  to follow, while Blondie had amused himself playing verbal tennis. Never seeming to exert himself, lobbing back just enough commentary on film criticism to confound their host, while Angel Eyes had listened and fired back and sometimes settled down in silence, the tip of one knuckle just touching his mustache. 

(Admittedly a damn good mustache, almost as good as his. Much better than Blondie’s. Not that he’d ever tell his partner so, but there’s a difference between a fine, artistic mustache and a man who simply hasn’t bothered shaving that part of his face, and Blondie falls on the wrong side of that divide.)

And after dinner, the soft darkness of the projection room, black walls and floor and ceiling and even the sofa they sat on. Muted, not shiny, as Angel Eyes had explained at great length; the better contrast, to allow the pictures full play. A film that had been not so bad, even after the eleventh time. Three times they’d paid for those tickets, when they’d been having a good run, then their luck had changed and they’d eased into theatres as much to stay warm at nights as to watch anything.

So it hasn’t surprised Tuco at all, that Blondie should have fallen asleep sometime during the last reel. Warmth and satiation and association, it ought to have knocked him out just the same. It would have, but he hadn’t trusted Angel Eyes; and coffee isn’t half so strong a stimulant as blind cold fear. 

He tosses back the rest of his drink without thinking, and wishes he had another. 

“You know, when I knew him he didn’t go by Blondie,” Angel Eyes says. “His hair wasn’t that colour, for one.”

(Left alone, it ought to be a darkish brown, uninspired and muddy-looking; and however hard up they’ve been, they’ve never skimped on that. There are things that matter too much to let slide, same way that Blondie doesn’t complain about his seeking out a mass every Sunday, and then slinking out just before the eucharist.)

“A man tells me what he wants to be called, I listen. Same as with me.  You don’t want to know my name,” Tuco says. 

“I want to know everything,” Angel Eyes counters. Just a conversational gambit- but the eyes, the eyes! christ almighty, nobody should go around with such a pinched, inquisitive face; so Tuco sighs and tells him, all sixteen syllables of it. Nobody not of his blood has ever heard the full litany without laughing, even Blondie. 

(His own fault, for he’d soaked Blondie in liquor beforehand, and forced himself up to such a pitch of hysterical, appreciative laughter that he’d allowed for no other reaction- but by then they’d known what fine partners they would make, and he hadn’t trusted his own temper otherwise. A wrong look then, and he would have walked away from the best hustle he’s ever grasped- which would have been plain idiotic.)

For response there's only a silence, of surprisingly lengthy duration. No laughter. 

“Better than mine,” Angel Eyes says, after a while. “Blondie keeps that one. Blondie knows everything about me, or the parts worth knowing, at least.”

“I won’t ask,” Tuco says, hastily. This is a very old routine, encoded in his bones by who-knows-how-many generations of ancestors whose chief merit had been survival:  _be comical, be unthreatening, never ask for anything, and maybe you will be safe, maybe then they will not take you and beat you and hurt you-_ and he does not want to be hurt. Even Blondie’s not worth that. 

(What the hell had possessed him, to walk beneath the roof of a man like this?)

“We met a few years ago, some flea-bitten hole over an ice rink. I thought he was talented. He was sleeping here the next night.” 

One of their off-periods, Tuco mentally translates; one of those times when they part ways swearing they’ll kill the other on sight, when someone takes the car and drives off, leaving the other stranded at a lonely gas station. The longest separation had been about a year, and they hadn’t talked about what had happened afterwards. 

(He’d found a restaurant where he could wash dishes and eat all he liked, dated a pretty redhead who appreciated a good mustache, and grown so tired of the world that it was either find Blondie again or throw himself into the Gulf. And the Gulf had smelled too bad to drown in.)

“He stayed for six months. Left one day without saying a word. I didn’t know why,” Angel Eyes says. “Couldn’t ever guess what he’d do. Do you know how rare it is for me, to find a man whose actions I can’t predict? I thought he’d tell you to leave tonight. I thought he’d watch this movie through. I thought I’d be having this conversation with him,” he says, thwacking the flat end of a cushion across Blondie’s face, “instead of with you.”

“Make me,” Blondie says, tone very dry. “So you two managed to avoid killing each other, then.“

“You didn’t ask,“ Tuco says; and a certain dizzy, giddy rush goes to his head, that he’s been placed on the same level as this wealthy, prideful killer who could have anything for the asking- except, perhaps, Blondie himself. 

(What the hell had possessed Blondie, to walk out of a place like this?)

“He has the right of it there,“ Angel Eyes agrees. “Are you staying or going?”

“For the moment, staying,” Blondie pronounces. He collects his hat from the floor, flips it on his head with careless grace. “Nobody else sleeps in my room tonight, I’ll see you two in the morning.”

He takes his time about leaving. A lingering, unhesitant gait to the door, rolling the doorknob just- _so!_ between his fingertips, then opening it wide with sudden gaping violence, every motion smoothly judged and delectable to watch, and if he has ever seen Blondie play the cock-tease more than now, Tuco decides, he has long since forgotten the incident. He crosses his legs and waits for something to happen. 

“…I may not be able to predict him, but a message like that isn’t hard to parse,” Angele Eyes says eventually. 

He doesn’t fancy this man, maybe actively dislikes him; but it’s better than working off the tension by himself. And there’s something appealing here, knowing for certain that the reason isn't exoticism or vulnerability or weakness, but exactly the same as his own. The man they both want has simply made himself unavailable. 

“Damn Blondie,” Tuco says. “Say. This rich man’s house, do you have one of those mirrors where you can watch from the other side?”

There’s an amused quiver of eyebrows, a movement that is not a tell because it’s altogether purposeful. “Now you, on the other hand. You’re predictable. I like that.”

They make it just in time to watch Blondie pulling off his shirt. 


	3. voyeur's domain

They don’t sleep together, as it happens. 

It would have been anti-climatic, rather literally, and Tuco can't blame Angel Eyes for stealing a march on him with the bathroom. Finds himself a little grateful for it, actually. Shamelessness is one thing. Standing numb and stupid in another man’s bedroom, with his member half falling out of his jeans and ecstasy still burning up his veins, is pushing the limit even by his standards. 

If it is Angel's bedroom, because he gets the impression not much sleep actually happens here. This luscious, ludicrous round waterbed he's lying on is straight out of central casting. Swings hanging from the ceiling, rope harnesses in one corner (now those, he knows the use of...). And the second bathroom has a ridiculous set of swinging doors, like the saloon in an old western. Gilded, but flimsy. Very exposed. 

Never mind. He rolls off the bed trying to stand up, hits the ground and spends a couple of minutes mumbling invectives into the carpet. More out of habit than anything else. It wasn't much of a fall, and this floor's soft enough he could easily fall asleep right here. 

Contrast, that's what it is. The sheer, solid  _wealth_ of this place hits him all over again, when he finally makes it to the bathroom. Everything gorgeous and shining, a sunken tub big enough to hold four with room to spare. Black and green stone everywhere, marble maybe, hell he doesn’t know what it's called- the only time he’s seen anything like this has been the odd overpriced hotel, at the height of their luck. And him standing here in sweat-marked Hawaiian shirt and soiled pants, wiping cum off with a wad of toilet paper. 

There’s a sound of running water on the other side of the wall; presumably, Angel Eyes is doing much the same thing. Or not. Maybe rich people just throw out their underwear every night, like he heard once about the queen of England. 

“The shit isn’t going to stink any less, because of these pretty surroundings,” Tuco says aloud, just to see if he’ll get a response. There isn’t one. 

Shrugging, he cleans up his clothes as best he can, takes advantage of the showerhead to get clean and wake himself up a bit. Three minute drill had always been a necessity during wintertime back home, before the hot water turned icy; he prefers baths these days but isn’t going to stand around hoping for one. Blondie always goes to work on the assumption that he holds all the cards. He likes playing at that himself, but it doesn’t stop him noticing where the exit signs are. 

(Besides, kicking out the third party strikes him as a sensible way of resolving this little Mexican stand-off they have going. It’s what he’d do.)

Be nice if Angel Eyes will let him catch a couple z's on the round thing, but leaving wouldn't be so bad at this point. That big meal, a good wank, all he needs to do is find somewhere decently sheltered and he’ll sleep for hours. He and Blondie have an agreed rendezvous at the town border, as usual. Six o’clock tomorrow evening. Make that today. 

If nobody’s there, well…by then he’ll be hungry enough to need a new plan. That’ll keep him busy enough not to fret. 

A slight bitterness chills him, while he dries off and rummages through his Duluth pack for the straight razor; this Angel Eyes is like who he ought to be, if he’d been lucky and wealthy and smart. Or maybe just smart. Enough to think up a really sharp dodge, not just their easy brainless games, something that would justify all this worry and hustle. 

(He’s better at the daily improv but is content to let Blondie do the long-term thinking, because his partner was always so good at it. Is still good at it; this must be why they’re here at all, why Blondie had gone to such lengths convincing him to look up Carson. There couldn’t have been a better way to work back into his Angel’s affections, than to win that game, look sharp and independent doing it…and then, the damned tease, hold off on closing the deal. Give it a week and Blondie will probably have lawyers inventing the man-to-man prenup.)

There’s six different kinds of shaving oil on the long fluted shelf below the sink, along with creams and perfumes and who knows what else; Tuco ignores all of them and starts shaving dry. His face is still damp, that’s good enough for him- it has to be, more often than not- 

god above, he’s tired. Or not half drunk enough. He retrieves a miniature from a roll of clean socks and polishes it off without looking at the label, feels a little better. Does he even remember the way out? Maybe it'd be smart to get going of his own accord, lift something missable while he’s about it-

A lock clicks open next door, and Angel Eyes finally emerges, apparently just to stare at him over the saloon doors. He's dressed in something it takes Tuco a moment to recognise as a bathrobe: thick, surprisingly fluffy, seamless. Something about Bible lessons…but the thought slips his mind almost immediately. 

“You might as well sleep here for the night,” Angel Eyes says. “There’s six other bedrooms you can have your pick of tomorrow, but I’m not giving you the guided tour at this hour. Take your time in the morning, I want to have a long conversation with Blondie before I talk to you again.” 

From that angle, Tuco estimates, approximately one hundred percent of him is on display. He carries on shaving. “You want to explain, why you’re not driving me off with a shotgun?”

“Blondie seems to want you to stay- or at least, didn’t demand that you go. For now that’s enough. There are other things you might do, to stay longer.” 

Depends on the price. Sometimes he pays it, sometimes he doesn’t, but he always hears out an offer, however humiliating the process of listening turns out to be. He bites back a good sharp comeback and readies himself for one more round. 

“Such as what?”

“You can second-guess him.”

“Sometimes. Sometimes, yeah- he’s my partner. What about it?”

“Teach me how to do it,” Angel Eyes says. "I want to know what he's thinking."

_Impossible. You’d have to be Blondie, to match him._

“Sure thing. Any other little miracles you want done?”

“That’ll do for now…”

“ _No hay de qué,_ ” Tuco says, easily; nicks himself across the ear, and spends the next several minutes swearing the air good and blue. 

(Confidently, though.)


	4. multiple-choice past

Tuco's still there, at the end of a week. 

He's still there at the end of four weeks, by which time his body's got used to this place in a way his mind says is dangerous; but then he's always been fairly good at living in the moment. Especially when the moment's this relaxing. Soft clean pillows every night, a cook who actually knows the difference between an empanada and a tamale. Best of all, nothing to do. 

Or maybe that's more of an annoyance, and there's plenty others to keep it company. He can't get used to the creepy way that the same music will play in every room in the house simultaneously. Piped through a custom synchronised sound system, who knows how (it turns out that Angel Eyes is a dedicated audiophile. Whatever an audiophile is, he's determined not to ask.) Also he's fairly certain that not only Angel Eyes but other people, maybe the cleaning staff, have enjoyed a good rummage through all of his belongings when he wasn't looking. And it's a little too much like having a curfew, in that he doesn't quite dare stay out too late, or do anything stronger than liquor. 

Blondie isn't around as much as he might be, and it doesn't take much imagination to guess where or why he's disappearing. Though at least they're still fucking. In Blondie's room (the one with the mirror); so Tuco knows exactly what that means, and who's on the other side enjoying it. He's been waiting to hear a warning about that little detail. On the other hand, he hasn't told Blondie about his first night here, so maybe they're even. There hasn't exactly been a good opportunity for a private conversation.

Which is something he misses, more than he would have expected; driving cross-country the way they do, there's always been time for long, comfortable chats together. Him blathering nonsense at eighty miles an hour while Blondie listens, maybe grins sometimes, slips in the odd damned sharp one-liner that upends the clever argument he's been crafting. It was something to do, and practice for hoodwinking marks, and being with his partner and self-indulgence all rolled into one. 

Talking with Angel Eyes, something he's spent far too many hours doing as of late, isn't a bit like that. He always has to be on his guard there. Though at least it stops him getting rusty.

“I asked him this morning how you met,” Angel Eyes says one day. During a session of Dostoevsky or Tchaikovsky or someone (for a man who loves music, he certainly doesn't mind talking over it). “And now I’d like to know how he lied to me.”

Tuco rips open a fresh deck of cards, starts to shuffle without looking. “You think we wouldn’t have the sense, to work out half a dozen pasts for ourselves in advance?”

“Oh, I think you did. So I want to know which one you’ll give me now. Without helpful prompting.”

“Mmm….a Catholic monastery,” Tuco says. “I was in training to become a monk.”

The questioner always gives him a Look, at this point; and it's funny to see that Angel Eyes isn't immune to all human urges. “You know how it is, with parents...you get into a little trouble, they throw fits and start paying the priests good money to sing masses for your soul. And my brother, he was already a superior at this monastery. So they gang up on me. One day I'm home, next thing I know Pablo is riding herd on me on a bus all the way to Wisconsin.” He slides a card out of the pack, tuts, puts it back again. Practice isn't so much fun without a couple of real games to keep up his interest. 

“If this is a story, you've seeded it fairly well. Ranting about cheddar like that the other night- is this why you don't like Wisconsin?”

Tuco nods. “If I’m telling the truth, it would.”

“But you might not be.”

“Why would you believe me? I tell you how I was going to be a monk, fasting and rising in the middle of the night to pray, who in their right mind would believe that about Tuco Ramirez?”

“You needn’t be so theatrical about it.”

He starts laying out hands, reshuffling them into the pack. How does Angel Eyes have the patience to just sit there listening, unmoving? That kind of motionless quiet would drive him crazy. “Don’t forget, you’re not the first person to hear this story. Or the last, I bet. So. There I am a year later, so miserable I can hardly breathe, and along comes Blondie, visiting the monastery on a day trip. His aunt has come to buy the jam- the jam is marvelous. That is not a lie. You can buy it at the supermarket.”

It does not look like Angel Eyes believes him. 

“Try the blackberry,” Tuco says solemnly. “It is very holy jam.”

“…what is the point, of a backstory that makes your listener want to throttle you?”

“Because by now you have forgotten about my past and you will only remember the jam. What kind of assassin never needs to have a conversation?”

“A successful one.”

“Bah. So. The two of us youngsters are shuffled off into the parlour together. Such a stiff parlour it is, too. Horsehair. I had to clean it every Wednesday, and-”

“Forget telling me the story like you’re selling a hustle,” Angel Eyes says impatiently. “Just give me the facts.”

“What facts are there to tell? He’s there. I’m there. We found a ladder, went over the wall, and nobody ever heard from us again. There’s your story, what more do you need to know?”

“…it sticks very close to his version, I’ll give you both that. There were more lurid details in his retelling. How he caught you in a terrible act of self-flagellation. Considerable tears. An imaginative use of butter.”

“And I bet you still think we are both lying.”

“I would think so, but it seems an odd story to stick to, otherwise…but I’ll tell you what would make sense. If it was Blondie, studying to become a priest, and you were the bored, day-tripping jam-thief who lured him away. Now that would make more sense, wouldn’t it?”

With great profundity, Tuco shrugs. Keeps flipping cards. “You think about it this way, eh? If it is me in that seminary, there’s no question what should be done. I would have made one of those terrible priests who runs off with a nun and disgraces the Church. Taking me away from there is a kindness and a blessing to all concerned.”

“And the other way…”

“And the other way, all we have is that someone who might have found his calling and made a fine priest, gives up heaven and all its angels because one smart-aleck teenager tempts him back to humanity with a jam sandwich,” Tuco says. “Now what kind of story is that, huh? None at all.”

“…that’s not the point. Is that one true?”

“You ask Blondie. He’s the philosopher."

"And you're wrong anyway," Angel Eyes murmurs, between half-closed eyes. "The fall. The accession to temptation, there's poignancy there. Entire religions are told through stories like that."

It's on the tip of Tuco's tongue, to say that the man is free to believe what he likes; but he hasn't been in the game this long without knowing when to shut up. 

"Give me a completely different one," Angel Eyes says suddenly. "Another of those stories you have up your sleeve."

"Two-dollar flophouse. Only one bed left, two of us, we ended up fucking because it was better than admitting we had nowhere else to go."

He'd be willing to bet there's a smile there, kept behind that sleek, inexplicable serenity. "Now that's just telling me what you think I'd enjoy hearing."

"You invite a hustler into your house, what the hell else do you expect?"

For a moment the question hangs, quivering; and his heart thumps while he wonders if he's gone too far. Instead he scores a laugh, and Tuco's not sure whether he hates Angel Eyes a little for it. The rich man humouring his jester, he's been here before, and it can work but he'd rather be with Blondie. Blondie has enough problems to fill the phonebook, but they run along different lines.  

Still. 

It's nice to know they have a sense of humour in common, if nothing else... 


	5. base and debauched as can be

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by this clip from Orson Welles’ unfinished Don Quixote. http://termiteart.blogspot.com/2007/10/most-beautiful-six-minutes-in-history.html it has never been in a movie.

“This doesn’t exist,” Blondie says, pulling another film off the shelf to add to a knee-deep pile. “This one hasn’t been released, this one was bowdlerized so badly they might as well not have bothered…you’ve been busy while I was away, I’ll give you that.”

“A few things,” Angel Eyes agrees, the picture of uninterest. He is making quite a show of cleaning his pipe, a task that couldn’t possibly require the diligent attention he’s affording it. 

It’s as good as a variety show, Tuco thinks: watching these two laying traps, circling each other for reactions. Angel Eyes has the home ground advantage, money and taste and a gentleman’s sense of their proper application. All Blondie has going for him is- well, being Blondie; but that’s enough to make for an even match.

The performances are for his benefit, naturally. The main thrust of his advice to Angel Eyes is that Blondie always needs some stirring up, somebody to show off to; and there's a whole long history of poker hands, hustles, scams of all sorts to back up his argument there. That a rich mysterious assassin who enjoys showing off is not ideally-equipped for that job, he'd left Angel Eyes to figure out himself; and now the three of them spend more time together. Knowing the value of an audience, he's starting to worry less what passes between these two when they’re alone. And it couldn’t be half so amusing, without that sharp undercurrent to their every word and action;  _have I made myself look such a fool as this, in front of Tuco?_ Winning’s not half so important as being seen not to lose.

So when Blondie visibly weakens, one hand clenched tight and a reluctant smile softening his mouth, Tuco knows immediately what’s in the wind. “Something good in there, Blondie? Let me guess. Donald Duck and all the little ducklings.”

“Something even more absurd,” Blondie says. “This one’s never  _gonna_ exist, Angel, how’d you get hold of it?“

“Telecine copy. As a favour for me, after I helped him smooth over some troubles with the Franco regime.”

“What sort of difficulties?” Tuco asks, honestly curious. The slightest mention of Spain always affects him, with a vivid, heart-wrenching ache he’d be hard pressed explaining to his own mother- pain, fascination, abhorrence?  _México_ , now, that’s a real place, maybe one he could call home once he’s made his pile. But  _España_  can’t be, it’s just the stuff of mad legends. Bullfights and windmills and a language he tries not to think in, until the demons are coming for him.  _Conquistadores sabrían todo sobre los demonios, los culos…_

“Elaborate ones.”

“Ask for the salt in this house, they’ll give you an hourglass,” Tuco mutters.He peeks over Blondie’s shoulder instead. “ _Don Quixote,_ eh? Only five minutes? Even I could sit still through that.”

“All right,” Blondie says, as if it's his decision to make; so it is.

Tuco goes and throws himself on the sofa, while Angel Eyes puts away his pipe and Blondie conducts whatever arcane rituals there may be, to make a little strip of plastic turn lively with colours and sound. They have tried to explain the process to him, both of them; and so far he has successfully forgotten every last word. There is always such a thing as knowing too much for comfort.

Like this: the vague embarrassment at realising that in so little time, he's begun to treat this place like home. An extra cushion carried in from the dining room, the slight floor scuff left by his boot. Snacks, in bright splashes of branding that clash against the projection room's mellow darkness. Any other rich man’s house, he’d barely dare to draw breath, or else take pride in leaving his mark. Neither reaction seems to fit his situation here, but he hardly knows how else to be. 

Sufferance, he must remember that. Always sufferance- why should that line be so famous, about relying on the kindness of strangers? Strangers can afford to be friendly. They know they owe you nothing. 

Tuco sighs, lets himself fall carelessly against Blondie as his partner sits down. A nicely judged thing, to make the action sloppy and slightly, painfully comedic: because to do otherwise would look too much like seeking comfort. 

“Get off,” Blondie mutters. Tuco shifts a little, not really going anywhere. Angel Eyes sits down on the other side, hands sheathed as ever; and the compromise seems to suit them all. 

_anybody might think, that we even like one another…_


	6. post credits scene

“C’mon, Benedict,“ Blondie says; and Tuco wakes up instantly. 

His partner knows better than to treat it as a party trick (after a childhood of only ever hearing the name before a well-earned punishment, that’s all it takes to rouse him from the deepest sleep). So he keeps his eyes closed and his breathing even, listening out for the situation- it can only be Angel Eyes, surely? The padded sofa arm beneath his chin is very distinctive, they haven’t gone anywhere. 

“Tuco…” Blondie has that drawn quality to his voice, like he gets after staying up too long without sleep, his smoke-harshened burr going wan. Tuco pulls himself up, opens his eyes. Still in the projector room. No sign of their host. His watch says it’s nine in the morning; the two film lovers must have been at it all night.

Probably other things too, considering- “Are we making a run for it?”

“…no,” Blondie says. It’s not the tone, it’s the length of time required for him to get out the monosyllable, that tells Tuco how surprised he is. “Why would we?”

“I dunno.” It seems slightly unfair that he’s this fresh and alert when his partner isn’t, especially when there’s no threat at hand that needs one of them to be sharp. “The way you woke me, I thought it might be an emergency.”

“Only bed,” Blondie says, yawning. Tuco chuckles, takes his partner’s arm. There’s this much to be said for living in a crazed millionaire’s mansion, it’s so much safer to be- 

well, his mind shies away from what it is, but it’s nice having it all the same. 

“So after all this time, you still don’t trust Angel Eyes?”

“He’s a hustler, just like us,” Tuco says casually. “You know how badly that always goes.”

It does, though. There’s a whole freemasonry of conmen and thieves out there, who Blondie’s always trying to get in good with and never really manages. Maybe they smell the ex-priest on him, or maybe it’s the company Blondie keeps, hard to tell either way. 

He’s never much felt the need for extra company himself. Anybody else getting in well with Blondie, the two of them would probably cut him out of the picture- and by now Angel’s made it clear that’s not the scenario here, but then what the hell is it? Greedy men are easy to predict; Angel Eyes isn’t.

That makes him nervous. 

“Good point,” Blondie agrees. “Might be time for us to think about what happens next. Moving on, maybe.”

Last week there’d been a cartoon on tv, a bunch of kittens making pancakes. One of them had gotten stuck on the ceiling, and then ever so slowly started falling, splat across a cat’s ears like a hat. 

He doesn’t feel like the cat. He feels like the pancake. “All those movies here. I thought you’d be watching them for years.”

“Doesn’t it disgust you?” Blondie unlocks the door to his bedroom, leads the way in. “The way he’s trying to buy us- the way he’s bought us.”

Tuco doesn’t respond right off, being preoccupied. The room’s a perfect reversal for its twin on the other side of the mirror, and he always has trouble keeping a straight face in here, even though it annoys Blondie. 

(A bit, because it annoys Blondie.)

Not that this place suits his partner at all- vague attempts at imposing a composed masculine disorder on this room have all utterly failed, defeated by cheerful, all-encompassing decadence. Unwashed jeans hanging off the rope harnesses, old boots mouldering on a fluffy purple shag rug, all of Blondie’s possessions simply look quaint and kind of cute. Tuco’s never really grasped what his partner gets out of waking up in here every morning. 

(What Angel Eyes gets out of it, he can imagine pretty well.)

“So maybe I don’t mind being bought,” Tuco says. “I mean, I’m glad I don’t have a mirror in my room. That'd be a bit much...”

“You don’t have one?”

“Sure. The blue bedroom across from the billiards room, upstairs, I moved in there the first day. No mirrors in there.” Too big for just him, and maybe that’s to encourage him to slip down and stay with Blondie a lot (not much of a hardship, that). But it’s somewhere he can retreat to at need, that four-poster and its sage-scented hangings. That goes for a lot, even if it’s somewhere he’ll never really be comfortable.

“…he didn’t offer me that.”

“He didn’t offer me that,” Tuco says, shrugging. “I asked.”

“We’ve been in this house, how long now…” and Blondie really must be tired, the way he just sits on the water bed like a normal person, instead of making a production out of it. “And this whole time, he’s left me to rot in here…thinks it’s funny. Just the way you do.”

It is and it isn’t, and now it’s been put to him like this, it’s suddenly clear to Tuco how much this particular hustle’s been costing his partner- that wholehearted love of cinema spoilt, when it’s only the means for a meal ticket. Comfortable as this house, it’s not so good for Blondie. Especially if his partner’s desperate enough to actually say so. 

(He should have seen it sooner, but, well, he’s  _codicioso_ ; also he’s pretty sure Blondie and Angel Eyes are still enjoying themselves in bed. The problem isn’t the sex, the problem is everything else.)

“Don’t worry about it,  _amigo,”_ Tuco says, pulling Blondie down on the bed. “Just like that time in San Francisco, you remember? I talked you out of that one, I’ll talk you out of this too…“

“You said,” Blondie murmurs, half-asleep already, “you promised never to mention that again.”

“So I did.”  _And you owe me that much, for making me have to think up ways to quit the best graft we’ve ever landed…_

It’ll be a wrench giving this all up, but at least he knows his instincts aren’t that far off. Him voicing warning long before Blondie makes the decision to go, that’s an old pattern between them.

(That’s not going to be much satisfaction a fortnight from now, when they’re broke and quarreling and gearing up for another round of small-stakes tedium. Maybe they could coax Angel Eyes into a payoff, if they teased him with the prospect of a return visit…)

(Or maybe, the thought crosses his mind, he could just tell Angel Eyes to stop playing mind games with the guy he likes- so he loses face, becomes a touch less mysterious, would that be so terrible for a change?)

“And I hate soup,” Blondie moans, the hard shell of his resiliency finally melted down, to something pathetic and a little heartrending. Damnit, he’s attractive when he does that. 

Not that Angel Eyes deserves to see it. 

It takes half a roll of duck tape from his pack, before the heavy woolen blanket can be made to stay up in front of the mirror; but Tuco manages the job at last. Makes sure his partner is wrapped up snugly, with the Duluth in easy reach (it’s a sure sign he’s planning on coming back).

And then he goes out to have breakfast, since who knows when he’ll get another one so good…. 


	7. a day late and a dollar short

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> following hard on the heels of the previous, perhaps even the same night

“The good thing about Blondie is, he doesn’t ask questions.”

It’s the first remark that pops into Tuco’s head, when Angel Eyes opens his bedroom door without knocking. While he’s busy tying the Duluth’s straps to his wrist, he’d rather have been caught out ten minutes earlier. So a man has urges, anybody can understand that; but this is going to be a little more complicated to explain.

“I’ll guess he knows, though.” 

“Because I told him,” Tuco agrees. “When I felt like it. Maybe I don’t feel like telling you…what are you doing here?”

“Blondie’s gone. I thought you might know where.”

“No idea,” Tuco says. Considers moving from his sprawled position on the bed, decides not to bother. Instead he checks a knot, pulling gently at the ends. (Blondie has made sure he’s very good at knots.)

“I don’t believe you.” 

“Why not?“

“Because you’re my only lead,” Angel Eyes says. Not loudly, but between sentences he's moved across the room with too much speed; they’d be face to face, if he looked up from this knot. Tuco ties another one instead. “I can't believe he'd abandon you without some hint. You two have been holding out on me, don’t think I’ve missed that.“

A small but very eager voice in his head says he could probably take this man in a fight, if it came to it; not so muscled as Blondie, and how tough can a pampered playboy be? Tempting to listen, but then, a gun is a gun... Even if all that stuff about being an assassin is nonsense (it has to be), he’s seen the firing range attached to this place, the room of glass-doored cupboards, and needs to assume this man is carrying.  

Also, he’s tied to this bag three different ways now, and that’s a distinct disadvantage when it comes to hand-to-hand. “Wrong question,” Tuco says, very carefully. “You should ask me if he’ll come back.”

The fact that Angel Eyes lets him get out the sentence at all is a good sign. He could have been interrupted. Shouted down, needing to defend his teeth, with a gun at his head, and that hasn’t happened. Straight truth is more than Tuco expects from anyone, even Blondie; but he’s starting to believe that when Angel Eyes says a thing, the man actually means it. Like not attacking people when he doesn’t have a reason for it, perhaps…

“Is he going to come back?”

There is something faintly ludicrous and sad at once, the way Angel's gloved hand would surely seize into a fist, if it wasn't clenched around the bedpost. Violent, perhaps- no, he doesn't think he'd call it that. Too restrained. 

“Ought to,” Tuco says. “He gets skittish. Used to tear off all the time, whenever we argued or he was bored or I made fun of his hair too much, it happens.”

“He never tried this stunt on me before. Not in that whole six months.”

Tuco nods. “Maybe you want to take that as a good sign. He doesn’t run away from a one-night stand, you know, he says goodbye first. Pays up and everything.” Actually, he’s only seen Blondie with a prostitute a couple of times, under peculiar circumstances- but he thinks it’s safe making the point. “It’s only when the situation starts getting complicated, then he starts to sweat and runs away…but he’ll be back this way again. Even if he doesn’t stay.”

“How do you know?”

“I’m here,” Tuco says, as sweetly as he knows how; and finally looks up with his best hustler’s smirk, while Angel Eyes stares at him. Trying to decide if he’s telling the truth or making up a story to stay fat and happy. 

What he does, it’s best when those two are actually the same. “Another thing, Blondie doesn’t leave in a crisis. If we’re in a tight spot, he makes sure to get us out of it, he loves times like that. So that means something too, you know?”

“…that he thought you’d be safe with me,” Angel Eyes says. Starts to laugh. 

He’s sure he’d thought it was a very creepy laugh, the first time he heard it; and so, Tuco concludes, he must have gotten used to it. Now it sounds all right. He unties all the knots, all except the first one that’ll keep the bag safely attached to his wrist, before the other man speaks again. 

“ _Why?_ ” With a gesture. 

“The bag? Pablo stole it from me once when I was sleeping, so I got into the habit of doing this. It’s a good one. I’d worry if I stopped.”

“Ah," Angel Eyes says. "I understand."

What Tuco wants to say is that’s ridiculous, almost an insult- there is no way Angel Eyes could know what it’d mean to lose one small bag, not with so much money and this big house- but common sense tells him not to. He'd rather like to stay on, and that means not offending his host. 

But his partner's rubbed off on him, a little; he's not going to ask. He tucks the pack beneath his head and stretches out freely. Aware of how vulnerable a man looks, simply lying like this while the other stands. Aware also, just how quickly he could be on his feet and out that door. If there's a proposal he move downstairs, for instance...and while he's contemplating that, his mouth goes and asks the question.

"Do you?"

Angel lets go of the post, finally; rubs his temples. His sweat lingers on the glove, a trail of moisture that catches the light. "It'd make too long a conversation to get into the details this late. I suggest we talk it over during breakfast."

"Well, I can promise I'll be there- and I'll tell you something else. Blondie doesn’t know that story.”

“You’ve been toting that bag around my house since the day you arrived, even I can see it matters to you. Why wouldn’t he know anything so basic about you? Why lie to me and say he did?”

“Like I said. Blondie doesn’t ask questions. You, I think you’d catch me out in the long run…”

Somewhere in there, Tuco knows, the moment to throw him out came and went without comment. Though Angel Eyes looks none too happy as he leaves.

That’s all right. 

He’ll cheer up again when Blondie comes back. 


	8. absente reo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "in the absence of the accused"....
> 
> the morning after

Angel Eyes is asleep at the breakfast table.

This wouldn’t normally be a matter for comment- Angel Eyes has a way of dropping off whenever he feels like it and convention be damned, albeit not often at this hour of the day. However. Today they have company.

The first company they’ve had since he’s been here, at that, and Tuco can’t help finding it suspiciously convenient timing that he’s been left to listen to this conversation. It’s sort of a letdown, honestly. If he had a nice _hacienda_ like this, he’d lock the gate and wouldn’t let himself be trapped into interactions with people whose existence he couldn’t stand.

“Doing that again. Angel Sleepyhead, that’s what the boys used to call him.”

The guest’s name is Baker. He’s not eating, which can’t but make Tuco mistrust him. He coughs a lot, between puffs at a pipe that is being held all wrong (well, it’s not how Angel Eyes does it). One of the board members of a hunting club that Angel’s in, has cheerfully hinted at being more than that. 

If Angel has a type- which Tuco’s honestly not sure about- and if it’s something that this guy has in common with Blondie, on present evidence that type has to be “grandiosely self-confident”. Though that applies to him too, come to think of it…

“I will say, it doesn’t half come in handy. The times we were all hanging around, waiting for just the right shot to present itself. While Angel Eyes would just be snoozing away in his blind- and bang!” (Tuco can’t help jolting, and splashes orange juice all over his bacon.) “It comes of that silent way he has, you know. Fine way to score yourself a choice set of antlers.”

If he was on the make, this man would be wonderful- loud and crude and craving a victim, exactly the kind who wants something for nothing- only he wasn’t planning to do that when he woke up this morning. Full of half-formed plans and anxiety for what happens next. Maybe this is the kind of thing that drove Blondie away, if Angel has a habit of keeping men around to save the bother of listening himself…

“Annnnngel. Angel. Wake up,” Baker orders, rapping on the table with the sharp end of a grapefruit spoon.

It occurs to Tuco to wonder, how many people think this is what  _he’s_  like, all fairly pathetic bluster and not particularly interested whether anyone else is fitting a word in edgewise. More than he’d guess, probably. He’s visited a lot of bars in his day.

Maybe that’s why he’s suddenly finding himself in Blondie’s part, all stoic and silent; but no, he can’t fool himself like that. The simple fact is that Baker gives him the creeps all over, and he doesn’t have a clue why. None of this kind of chat is new territory for him, so…for someone who relies on gut instinct as much as he does, complete bafflement is not a comfortable state of affairs.

“Angel,” Baker croons, reaching out to poke the sleeping man’s shoulder with his spoon; and before Tuco quite knows he’s doing it, he’s leaning across the table with his hand extended, ready to slap the interloper away-

_did I think he was Blondie, just for a moment? Not wanting to see that dignity punctured?_

_but if it was Blondie I wouldn’t do this, if I was hustling-_

_when did I stop?_

Baker’s looking at him, uncertain. He has to do something.

“Not like that,” Tuco says, very dignified. Slowly he raises one black-gloved hand from the table, so heavy in his own he’d honestly think the man was asleep; and even when Angel opens his eyes to fix him with a keen stare, Tuco doesn’t know whether that was faked or not.

“Morning,” Angel Eyes says. In a tone that promises he’ll take charge of the situation whether he understands it or not; Tuco lets go. Angel nods at him and turns, surveying Baker with an air of considered disgust.

Also a certain degree of amusement, which is what Baker responds to. He smirks, rather too broadly; and it hits Tuco then, just what’s bothering him. It’s as if Baker wants somebody to catch him out.

Now that isn’t like him one little bit.

*************

“I will get rid of him as soon as possible.”

“You said that this morning,” Tuco points out. Now it’s so late they’ll have to have the man for dinner. “Not to speak ill of your friends, but since he isn’t…”

Angel looks just a bit taken aback by that, as though he’d expected more patient acquiescence. “Sometimes these things take time- I suppose I’ve disappointed you. Revealing that I don’t entirely live to please myself, like some medieval hermit basking in isolation.”

“Why not? Blondie would.” The two of them aren’t that different.

Angel Eyes opens his mouth, ready to say something; then cuts himself off. It’s not characteristic of him, uncertainty like that, and Tuco presses his advantage just to fill the silence. “What’s the worst that can happen, if you tell this man to go fuck himself?”

“Actually-”

He’s interrupted by Baker, who comes back in with too large a smile and damp hands- probably piss, Tuco thinks sourly- “We should do this more often, Angel, you know we really should.”

“This” being far too much time spent standing around chatting about Angel’s gun collection, looking at the pieces. Maybe he should have left, instead of tagging along for conversations in which he has nothing to say and less desire to say it; but he feels oddly responsible for looking after Angel in Blondie’s absence. Stupid, sure- Angel Eyes is perfectly able to look after himself- but it’s what his partner would want him to do.

Angel Eyes has a small reluctant half-smile on his lips now, not a bad look for him at all. “I won’t deny, there’s times when I’ve missed talking shop like this.”

“Talking shop is nothing,” Baker says easily. “I think you’re missing the hunt, aren’t you? Now I have a little expedition all organised, every detail mapped and paid- but I could use one more. You’d be good for it, you know how much, and it’d do you good too.”

“I said I wasn’t interested. Not right now.”

“What, does your new houseboy give-”

If he was thinking about it, he’d know better than to wallop a fellow guest in Angel’s house. Tuco’s not thinking in the least when he steps close and lashes out- but the punch never lands. Angel sidesteps to grab his wrists, hard, and he knows a dozen tricks for slipping out of that soft leather grip or turning the force against him, but even as Tuco’s thinking that the hold on him slackens-

the intent not to stop him, exactly, just to check and see how far he means it-

“Give such good head,” Baker finishes; but with far less assurance now. “Ooh. I see, you’ve hired yourself a new bodyguard?”

Angel’s gaze meets his-  _is that something you can stand-_ and Tuco lets him know  _yes it is_ and they break apart again, each as calm as if the moment had never happened. “You wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end,” Angel Eyes informs him, indifferent as dust. “Trust me, Baker, I’d hate to see you push your luck like that again.”

B, after A. 

Baker wibbles a bit, doesn’t apologise but drifts off the subject to more innocuous topics, while Tuco puts his hands in his pockets and listens. Sulky strong man isn’t his usual type, but he’ll cope.

_Blondie would have watched me punch the lights out of that devil. Enjoyed it, and lit a cigarillo over the body when I was done-_

_but the way Angel looked at me, knowing, only Blondie does that-_

yes. All things considered, he can stand not being the one with the flapping mouth for a change.

He’s got a lot to think about.


	9. displacement activity

“Have fun cooking,” Susan says, juggling her purse and a casserole dish with difficulty. Angel Eyes barely manages to lift a keyring off the latter, before she charges off.

Baker stares at them dubiously. “You need your bodyguard to help you make soup.”

“Yes.”

“Angel, you never let  _anybody_ help you make soup. It’s your thing! It’s what you do!”

“He’s the one who knows the recipe,” Angel Eyes says, slamming the door hard in Baker’s face. There are an unusual number of locks and fasteners on it, more than you’d necessarily expect for a kitchen; and Angel takes care to deploy every last one before he speaks again. “That was largely to get him to go away, he knows I don’t ever let anybody help me cook in the field. Although if you have any notions on the subject, feel free to mention.”

“Maybe I don’t know how to make a good soup,” Tuco ventures, taking two tries to pull himself atop the heavy steel table. This room is huge, big enough to butcher an ox and cook it afterwards; he wonders if the house came this way or if it was something Angel installed. “I mean, not like a man like you would want to eat.”

“I might surprise you.”

That grim smile, it’s Angel Eyes all over, but also they are alone and the door is locked and he might be forgiven for constructing it as flirtatious. Thank god for Blondie. Having the man between them means nothing can happen, not of too much consequence…

if he passes it off lightly, maybe Angel will take it the same way. “If you need something nice, how about minestrone? Minestrone is easy, anybody can make that.”

“Could work, although I do have recipes for that.  _Mea culpa…”_

Tuco snorts. “Your fault for what?” It’s nice that Angel Eyes will stop to explain himself, when asked to translate, but that bit of Latin everybody knows.

Though maybe not in Angel’s circles. The man looks just a little surprised (mischievous, almost, that expression is only ever fleeting but it makes him feel more at home). “For thinking you’d have something more exotic up your sleeve. I shouldn’t have assumed that, or that I was entitled to it if you did- I can see how it might feel too much like your hustle.”

“Nobody is going to ask me for the recipe for  _menudo_ over a poker game, that’s more Spanish than they want to know. You want a recipe for chili that’ll make you very sick, I can give you that. Kidney beans without enough soaking…it used to make Blondie mad,” Tuco says, absently rubbing his mustache. “He said it was enough to take a mark’s money. I said, if they were dumb enough to ask the man they were trying to con for a recipe, they deserved what they got. But I guess we’re not in a poker game now…”

He trails off, waiting for Angel Eyes to respond, but the man’s hunting through a bookcase now. “You’re like Blondie sometimes, you know that? I talk all the time, but when I stop, maybe you still don’t say anything.”

“I’m listening,” Angel Eyes says simply.

His partner also listens to him, so what’s the difference here? “ _Menudo_ is terrible. All that tripe, I think it was the forfeit for a drunken bet…no, I make decent  _albondigas_  but I won’t cook that today. Baker’s here.”

“Not necessarily a sticking point. We could always fob him off with a can of Campbell’s.”

Tuco trusts Angel enough now, to give him the side-eye when that seems right. “Funny idea of hospitality you have, eh?”

“You’ve met Baker.”

Good point. He switches topics. “And why do you even have canned soup, eh? That doesn’t seem much like the Angel Eyes I know-” and stops himself just in time. Damnit, he is not talking to Blondie and ought to remember that.

“Susan uses the kitchen for her own cooking before she goes home, and she says it’s a requirement for making genuine hotdish. Naturally I think that’s a travesty, but it’s worth conceding the point when she feels so strongly about it. Treating the help badly can get a man killed.”

Ah, ah- that explains it. All the politeness, the willingness to indulge him. “And you think I’m Blondie’s help, eh?”

“If Blondie would just explain himself once in a while,” Angel Eyes says, “I might have an answer for that. As it is, I don’t know and I’m not guessing.”

“Uh-huh- well, I’m not. We’re partners.” It feels good, to be able to say that out loud. Most anywhere else, it’d be dangerous to even hint what the two of them are to each other. “But you must really not like Baker- the first night we were here, we had the best  _mole_ I’ve ever tasted.”

Angel Eyes looks at him quizzically, while dumping an armful of cookbooks on the table. “Is that what it was? I’d forgotten.”

 _How you forget a thing like that, well, maybe that’s what being rich does to you._ “Sure. We parked the station wagon outside, came into this huge house. I thought, this is when he tells me to leave, but you didn’t. You even let me pick the supper.”

That’s a slightly edited version- he remembers lingering at the door while Angel and Blondie had been getting vigorously reacquainted in the hall. Wondering if he should go back to the car, until Angel had opened the door again and told him to come inside already. Maybe Angel doesn’t remember that part either, but he’s still grateful for it.

“Well, it was never any good asking Blondie what he wanted,” Angel Eyes remarks; which is so perfectly true that it makes Tuco laugh.

“But you could have…I don’t know. Kept him, thrown me out.”

“I wasn’t taking chances, after what went wrong the first time. If he needed you to be with him to stay, I was willing to accept that- only that doesn’t seem to have worked either. I do seem to keep asking you the wrong questions.”

“How’s that?”

“You might have told me that Blondie’s in the habit of running off.”

“Sure. If you’d asked.”

“For someone who talks all the time, you’re very good at not giving away more than you want known,” Angel muses. He’s studying the cookbooks now. Clean as if they’ve never been used, but the spines are cracked and pages torn. They must be in fairly frequent rotation, Tuco decides.

“You knew what I was, when I showed up…well, maybe you didn’t. I remember seeing Susan and thinking, no way can that Valkyrie cook anything Mexican. I was wrong about that.”

“Brought up in Mexico City,” Angel Eyes says at length. “Then she moved north and took up turkey hunting. I gave her some tips on the subject, before hiring her.”

Tuco’s not sure, whether it’s Susan or the glossy pictures of chicken soup that are making Angel smile like that. He’s not even very fond of chicken soup and that print would make him smile.

“But you’re right. Assumptions are dangerous things, to my way of thinking.” Angel Eyes hasn’t even taken the gloves off yet, has been flipping through pages mercilessly. “And I seem to have been making too many of them about Blondie. As for you… _sub silentio_ , that’s a phrase that might suit you. In silence, that which is implied but never stated.”

That’ll be something to put on his next postcard.  _Hey, brother, I met a crazy millionaire who gifted me a Latin phrase, all my own. Maybe you know it…_

“More than Blondie, it’s difficult to catch you in an actual lie. I have a certain respect for that. Enough to avoid pressing you about anything you’d prefer not to tell- though I have made a few guesses.”

It’s not that an enthusiasm for poker has taught him, how to sit here calmly swinging his legs and not breaking into a sweat; it’s that having the talent made poker an obvious use for it. “Guess all you like. Back to confessions again, eh? Well, I gave you one last night.”

“And I haven’t given you mine yet,” Angel Eyes agrees. “Having something taken away from me- I had a mentor who used to do that, quite often.” His smile could be used to flavour a meringue, Tuco thinks; all sour and yet a little sweet. “You might call her a self-help expert. She’d hide my possessions when I wasn’t looking, to drill in the point that I shouldn’t put my faith in any specific material object.”

“You paid her good money for that? If all you want is to have somebody pocket things when you aren’t looking, I’ll do it for half the price,” Tuco jokes.

“That debt’s been paid long since,” Angel says, somewhat tiredly. Baker is a wearying man to have around the place, Tuco decides; he should do something about that. “Her efforts succeeded.”

“…you mean you have all this, wealth and everything, and you don’t enjoy it? What’s the use of that?”

“Sometimes I ask myself that same question.”

Tuco shakes his head. “It’d be different if you’d been poor, like me. If I was rich enough to buy a whole state, there’d still be things I liked better than anything else.”

“Like that pack?”

“Like the pack.” He considers for a moment, whether to tell the story about how he got it. Decides to hold off (if they’re buying and selling stories now, that makes information precious.) “Or the St Christopher’s medal my brother gave me, I wouldn’t lose that for anything. Some other things, too.” It’s strangely tempting to mention the jute winding, the one that Blondie begs for at nights, but Angel Eyes must know about that already; and he’d feel wrong mentioning it out loud. Maybe he should, though. It might make Angel Eyes feel less cut off, to find common ground…no, no, that won’t work with Blondie away.

He’s suddenly aware how lonely this is. Normally when his partner splits he’ll go off to find a girl, someone who’s soft and dark and won’t want anything but kindness and maybe some help with her rent. That doesn’t seem like an option this time though, given the current delicate arrangement- damn it, he’d better stop even thinking along those lines. Angel’s in much too close proximity, leaning over the table like that.

“Hmm,” Angel Eyes says. “This pork egg drop looks promising. And if it doesn’t go well, we might have a worse test subject to try it on than our dinner guest.”

“At least you like  _something,_ ” Tuco says with relief. “You like soup.”

“You say that as if liking is a positive virtue.”

“Live with Blondie long enough, you’ll decide the same thing just in self-defense. Not that it does him any good- you know I’ve had just this one bag, for years and years. Cost a lot of money, but it’s lasted me. Now he goes and gets a duffle from the Salvation Army every year, and it’s cheap and there’s holes in it, or the strap’s broken or something, not a quarter so good as mine. And he says that’s less worldly than loving a pack the way I do- now does that make any sense?”

“There’s something to be said for both points of view,” Angel Eyes says imperturbably. Tuco rolls his eyes, as he hoists himself off the table.

“How long does making a soup take you, then?”

“Oh. A few hours, generally…it’ll be a fine excuse to avoid Baker for a while.”

“That’s not very polite for a guest,” Tuco says gravely. “I’ll go talk to him, keep him amused.”

“You might not want to do that,” Angel says. “Believe me. He’s more violent than he looks.”

“Maybe I don’t. Maybe I don’t need you treating me like the help, either. You want to give me orders, you better put me on a salary first.”

For a minute he can see that Angel’s actually considering it, hard thought and a note of concern, and it reminds him of this morning’s mistrust. This isn’t the best idea he’s ever had, to be sure.

“I don’t know that I could look Blondie in the face when he gets back, if I did that,” Angel Eyes says eventually. “Buying you off, I think you’d both consider that an insult.”

“True.” An insult he might want to take up one of these days, but he’s getting a sense of what stakes Blondie’s playing for, and they’re too good for him to fold just at present.

“So just- be careful. You know where to find me. And tell Baker if he tells me that story about Santa Fe again, I’ll serve him up his own head for dinner.”

“Done.”

Angel Eyes is precise; a few hours means at least two. Baker’s been hanging around all day, ignoring every hint to go with the enthusiasm of the truly desperate- or the enamored.

So obviously it’s not right for either of them, but maybe a little hospitality will slake both their troubles at once…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _menudo_ \- spicy tripe soup. 
> 
> _albondigas_ \- meatball soup.


	10. wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Angel's POV.

Baker’s waiting right outside and puffing hard when I unlock the kitchen. I wish I could say I was surprised.

"Soup's on." 

“He’s a loveable little doughnut and all, but you do realise that Tuco’s an idiot,” Baker says.

If he was saying it in his usual voice, that artless prattle capable of making grown men weep- a more useful trick than it sounds, in our profession- I’d throw him out the door right this minute. But for once he’s aiming for serious. As pathetic a man as Baker is, that unconsummated crush and his feeble attempts to copy my style, he has as keen an eye as any other survivor of this game. There’s always the possibility he’s caught something I’ve missed.

And where Blondie and all that relates to him is concerned, I’m at more than usual risk of a blind spot.  _Qui me amat, amet et canem meum-_ no, that’s rather too crude. Tuco deserves respect, if nothing else.

“What makes you say so?”

“When we’re talking about hunting, he thinks that we mean  _hunting._ For actual deer and squirrels. Even that Blondie of yours knew better than that. _”_

(Ignore the swift, warming sensation contingent on that  _yours_. There’ll be time to enjoy that later, in the privacy of a solitary bedchamber.) “You wouldn’t know the meaning of discretion, if it dragged you bodily into its own boudoir.”

“Agreed,” Baker says. He slaps himself down on a frilled settee, struggles to knock the dottle out his pipe. The man has the soul of a cigarette smoker, and the sooner he grasps that the happier he’ll be. “But- it’s not fair, Angel, it really isn’t. As long as you were only fucking inside the profession, I thought I’d have my chance sooner or later-”

(In his dreams. Or somewhere even less substantial, preferably.)

“-but if you’re going extracurricular now, all I can say is you might at least have mentioned to the man. What he was getting into.”

He misunderstands entirely, a situation not without precedent. But spelling out that my lover’s run off and left Tuco under my protection will do nothing but lose me face. “Do you list your offenses for the amusement of all of your one-night stands?”

“Not exactly my brand of vice,” Baker says, a bit curt. He really does think that we’d be famous together. A duo to beat the world, if I’d only soften up and take him at his word. Trouble is, I know him too well for that; the lazy but quite earnest loyalty he’s willing to exert on my behalf now would give way to paranoia, uncertainty, any number of jealous rages. “You’re going to break that soft heart of his, you know. It’ll smash him like an egg.”

“So he could stand a little hard-boiling first.” Is it possible that Blondie’s never told Tuco, what he does to keep the pair of them afloat? Playing games, pretending there’s nothing more happening than a slightly inept poker hustle- it could be an unspoken test. To see whether I’ll appreciate the fragile innocence entrusted to me,  _sancta simplicitas,_ and treat him with the same delicacy of touch. 

Or perhaps- it’s just as plausible- that Blondie’s hoping for me to stumble in blindly, that I’ll let slip the secret he’s never brought himself to confess in cold blood. Before meeting the pair of them, I’d have thought that purest nonsense. Any partnership worth the name ought to share all things in common, as good a reason as any for me to lack one.

But a word is like a bullet; the wound might heal, but you can never take it back. How long might I regret this sending?

No time at all, if he ever proved a threat. A more protracted mourning, if it’s only that Tuco’s hapless enough to be caught between us. Not that mourning would do the man much good…am I so unwilling, then, to inflict this small cruelty when I’ve done much worse? There’s words for that as well, soft ones, which have no place in my conception of myself. Blondie never would challenge that, and perhaps that’s how he held my interest.

No, no: better recast this in more familiar terms. Blondie can do his own dirty work. I’ll reprimand him on the matter, when he returns.

There. That’s satisfactory.

“Then you have quite a good opportunity coming up,” Baker says. “I’ve left him in those delightful mirror rooms, trying to fix a punctured waterbed. Caused an extraordinary mess, he’s panicking about it to a hilarious degree. Asking me how much I thought it might cost to fix.”

“He went to you about it?”

“You might say I was there when it happened,” Baker says, with an unpleasant warning of a grin; and rather than contemplate that in the slightest degree, I head down to the bedroom myself.

(To take a man’s partner, just because you can’t have the man himself…)

*********

The door’s locked, to be sure. It takes a minute after I knock before Tuco lets me in; but he seems serene enough when he does, and the room looks normal. Colder than usual, perhaps. Tuco’s got the Duluth on his shoulders, belly band cinched tight, as he’ll wear it when unusually nervous- that’s the only sign of anything amiss.

“All well here? The soup’s ready. Scallions instead of chives, as you prefer.” It matters to him apparently, enough to scrawl marginalia in my cookbooks. Blondie never cared. 

“Fine,” Tuco agrees. “Sounds good, I’m looking forward to it.”

The bed’s been remade neatly enough. I strip it down to the bottom sheet, checking for a rent or hole, but there’s no sign of one. Of course, he might have replaced it- how many spare round bottom sheets are there in this house? I’m not sure myself.

 _Ad pedem litterae._ My mentor would not be pleased with me.

“Was Baker hands-off?” Tuco asks. “I wouldn’t have fucked him, if you’d mentioned.”

“Ah- no prior claim, I’ll promise you that. Though it doesn’t say much for your taste.”

“Taste is taste and sex is sex,” Tuco says, calmly enough. He lights a cigarette and watches me, with interest that might be guilty or just amused. “What brings you here?”

“Curiosity.” There’s a certain test I might try on him, imperfect as it is. “Do you mind?”

I beckon; Tuco frowns, but comes close. Close enough for me to unfasten a button and lay a hand beneath the dark blue cotton of his shirt. One of the too-big ones he borrows from Blondie. Just as well, given his own execrable taste for hot neon patterns.

His heart thumps under my hand, too fast and rough even through the thin material of my glove. But he doesn’t venture to stop me, or to make the moves anyone trained to this game ought to make, just for simple self-protection. Either he knows nothing whatsoever…or he knows better but judges it best to trust me absolutely.

And I can’t tell the difference, damn him and his clear brown eyes. This is no help.

“So much for the impromptu lie detector,” I say, withdrawing my hand. The button proves tricky to do up, with my gloves on; Tuco chuckles and lightly bats away my fingers, does it up himself. Still puffing on the cigarette, no less. “Baker said you two managed to puncture the waterbed. The way he described it, I was expecting a second Flood.”

He tuts. A ridiculous, oddly charming noise. “Blabbermouth, eh? I bet you’d never have known the difference if he hadn’t tattled, have another look.”

Perhaps not. The patched section of PVC is obvious enough now I’ve uncovered it, but a detail I’d have discarded as unimportant unless something else had drawn it to my attention. Assuming I’d been checking under the sheets, which I might not have done all year- such toil in constructing my own labyrinth, a place with more windings than I can count. Less than wise. “You did this yourself?”

“Sure. Sure, it wasn’t any worse than fixing a bicycle, once I found the repair kit.” He sighs. “What possesses a man to bring a knife to bed, I don’t know…but I did tell Baker not to worry. New sheets, a lot of work with the hair dryer, and I turned on the air conditioner to take care of the humidity. All good as new, I promise you that.”

“Mmm-hmm.” It’s possible I’ve been wrong from the start, of course. If loud-mouthed Tuco, cheerily dominating any scene he’s in, has been the brains of the operation all along and Blondie no more than meat. An unusual take on the formulae, but not inconceivable. “Well, at least you handle yourself in a crisis better than he does.”

“I try not to worry people,” Tuco says. “Unless they do something to worry me first, then I’ll do as I please.”

It might be a threat.

Or perfectly in earnest.

Or both.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title quote is from Genesis 6:17- “And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die.”
> 
> Angel's a right cheerful narrator. :)
> 
>  _Qui me amat, amet et canem meum_ \- Love me, love my dog. 
> 
> _sancta simplicitas_ \- sacred innocence. A touch of irony there. 
> 
> _Ad pedem litterae_ \- loosely, the devil is in the details.


	11. sooner call it a date than a partnership

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Trigger warnings: in which various racist comments are made, and Tuco is bratty and unwoke on the subject of feminism.)

“We’re going to be okay,” Tuco promises Angel Eyes, as he shuts the broom cupboard. Wishes he had a name to call the man, that wouldn’t sound so stupid to say aloud in public.

He ought to have known better than taking Angel to such a questionable joint- but a part of him had already been itching to get back to a place like this, sizzling neon lights and watered beer, girls who’ll spit in your eye once they notice who you’re with and why. Living at the hacienda’s so safe. And Angel had been the one to suggest it.

“Blondie told me stories. But countrified, prettied up for my benefit-” this with a sardonic look in his eye, the one Tuco used to think was bitter but has since decided is Angel’s idea of humour. “I wouldn’t mind getting a notion of what the scene looks like to you.”

“You promise not to talk too much?” Anybody else, he’d be on pins and needles, ready to cringe at an overplayed hand (it’s different for him, that’s the whole shtick). But by now they’ve come to know each other; Tuco has a rather definite idea that if he told Angel to shut up, the man would actually shut up. At least in this particular context.

“Easily done. Lay out any ground rules that make sense to you.”

Simple as that, eh? “If I say we leave, we go and no argument. Let me take the lead unless some damn cowboy decides that beating me to a pulp sounds like a fun Friday night, then you do whatever makes sense. Even if that’s just leaving, I don’t want to look after somebody in a fight when they don’t want to be there. And since it’s your idea,” Tuco had said, drawing just enough irony into his voice- “I’ll let you stake us out for it.”

“Fine,” Angel had agreed. Before adding, “Anything you win, keep for yourself.”

Now that’s where the trouble had come in.

Being so broke they’d started dipping into the stake for tequila money, that had not been a good state of affairs. Not that the best room and board he’s had since leaving Brooklyn is anything to sneeze at- who’s he kidding, the hacienda’s way better than that rusty tenement. But there hasn’t been a word about the green stuff since meeting Angel, and while that’s strangely reassuring, it also worries him what’ll happen if the bubble bursts. (How the hell is Blondie managing alone, with only half their cash? Maybe his partner will come back when he gets hungry enough).

Tuco knows better than to stare and lick his lips, watching Angel count out enough money to keep him and his partner for months- but the notion crosses his mind, to just grab the cash and run. Not gonna happen. It’s a bank, and there’s such a thing as cops, and he could confidently set his life expectancy at three days pus or minus a couple, after a play like that. Doesn’t stop him thinking about it. It’s a free country.

“We’re not doing the hustle, obviously,” he explains once they’re on the street. “I only do it with Blondie, and anyway we’d have to split up for that. And I’m not dressed for it.”

In lieu of his more usual eye-catching gear, he’s plumped for the skirt-chasing outfit: khaki pants and matching drip-dry jacket and a shirt with just two colours in it, something Angel’s been giving him weird looks for ever since they left the house. It’s slightly uncomfortable, wearing it for a night like this. Somebody who looks too crazy to fuck doesn’t have to worry about anybody trying. Not like Blondie, fending away offers with a stick whenever people notice he’s pretty.

(In a way, he’s always been jealous of that. But also it’d just be another problem, make him more vulnerable than he is already, and he’d just as soon give that a miss.)

“Then what did you dress for?” Angel asks.

“A few drinks, a few hands of poker, nothing too messy- I guess you’re not looking for a girl at the end of the night, huh? So we won’t do this by the book.”

“Certain companionship wouldn’t necessarily go amiss,” Angel Eyes says, taking him by the hand. Thin white gloves for a change, suitable for cardplay, and he’s guessed that someone must be getting fairly horny in his partner’s absence, but this is almost comical. By Angel’s usual standards, they’re practically fucking in the street. He should have gone with that blue-toned Hawaiian shirt after all.

Then again, Baker finally getting the hint and going yesterday means that he’s fresh out of options again. And deprivation always gives him an appetite.

“…see how the night goes,” Tuco mutters, in a deniable fashion; and then takes his hand away because there are about fifteen good reasons for them not to be seen like this. “And we’ll have a few drinks, like I said.”

“I don’t often drink in public,” Angel Eyes says. There’s a vibe of transgression there, that he would expect, but maybe not with that much wryness to it. As though it’s a private joke.

“Why, you want people to think you’re on the wagon?” Plenty of good reasons for that. He’s done it himself with girls a couple times, if he hasn’t ordered yet and it looks like that’ll impress them. “I know you’re not a teetotaler, with all the red wine that goes into your soups.”

“Believe it or not, the way I cook them burns the alcohol content off. There’s no risk of intoxication from my venison stew, I can assure you.”

“Oh. That’s a little disappointing, I thought the risk made it more fun…well, if you don’t want to, you don’t want to. I can fix you up. There’s a couple tricks so nobody will know the difference.”

“Just the one…shouldn’t hurt. No.”

Cue a sudden warmth washing through his gut. The tense, attractive quality of that rueful craving- somebody who knows better, not even trying to resist temptation- that doesn’t sound like buttoned-up Angel Eyes one little bit, that sounds like him. Or somebody who’s been listening to him an awful lot, the last couple months.

Skirt-chasing gear, yes. The clothes he wants other people to see him in, when he wants to fuck them. Damn his instincts.

_And damn you too, Blondie. I hope you get back soon…_

One of not too many thoughts he’d bothered to spare for his partner that evening, two bars and three nightclubs and who knows how much poker. That he thinks had gone a little better than usual, without having to juggle the hustle and betting and trying not to drool over Blondie looking zesty, although Angel Eyes proves more of a distraction there than he’d like to think. Angel’s certainly never going to cut it as a cardsharp; he’d easily been the weakest player during that Carson foursome, and calling his playing tonight desultory might be kind. Too busy staring at the room, like a wet-behind-the-ears tourist. 

Him ordering the expensive mixed drinks, the ones he’d never had the money to risk trying before. Angel had held off for a while, until they’d accidentally landed up somewhere halfway clean, with a bartender willing to open a new bottle of whisky on request, and had downed the shot in one.

That had been a good two hours ago. But if Angel’s not drunk enough to be desperate now, Tuco’s at a loss for what’s wrong with the man. The moment there’d been a crash on the door downstairs,  Angel had grabbed him and made for an exit as though he’d been rehearsing. 

“Look, these police raids happen all the time," Tuco tries to reassure him. "They round you up, you’re in the slammer for a night, all a man like you has to do is pay bail and get out.” He spares another quick glance for the door. Sooner or later somebody’s going to look in here and then they’re going to be in for it.

“I am not going to let anyone take me anywhere,” Angel says, flipping a gun out from somewhere under his coat. No doubt it’s loaded. Tuco’s positive he's ready to use it.

“You said you’d listen to me, huh? You gonna break a promise? Right now it’s just a raid. The cops shove some people around a bit, somebody gets beaten up, they’ll survive that. You start shooting, they start shooting, people end up dead. And I’m the kind of guy who’s ready made for a target.”

“If I have to, I’ll use it,” Angel says stubbornly; but he shoves the gun out of sight again, and actions always matter more with him. “I can’t afford a run-in like that.”

“Okay. I said to trust me, I’ll get you out of this.”

His mind’s been working on it, while his mouth’s been busy; there’s shelves of cleaning products, buckets, a mop cart. Too bad he didn’t bring his Duluth- damn it, this is exactly what’s wrong with wearing something too stylish to pair with a canoe pack. “You see any rubbing alcohol?”

Wordlessly, Angel takes a bottle down from a high shelf, wraps his fingers around it when they won’t cooperate. It occurs to Tuco he might be drunker than he realised.

But the basic idea’s solid, he just has to make it work. “Now- um. We take everything off the cart, put it back on the shelf, you get inside. Pour some alcohol on me, I’m going to be drunk.”

“You  _are_ drunk.”

“I know, I want to look it. Make me messy.”

There’s something much too sexy and familiar at once, about the way Angel Eyes almost chokes in disbelief- Blondie ought to know better but still does the same thing, when he’s caught off guard. There’s something even worse about how fast Angel intuits what he wants, mussing up his hair but good and trickling alcohol down his shirt and adding an artistic scruff of dust to his collar. Fuck it, he’s getting a hard-on like nobody’s business. Tight pants too, that’s not going to help.

“If I were a janitor,” Tuco says, with what he’s aware is a slightly exaggerated dignity. 

Glances around, paws hopefully at the ventilation duct. Out comes- yes! a beat-up but serviceable edition of _Playboy_ , two of them in fact, and it’s not quite what he had in mind but maybe the detail will sell it even better. “Now Angel, you hide yourself in the cart under those tablecloths, and for the love of- of somebody or other, don’t sneeze.”

“You’re sure you know what you’re doing.”

“I better be sure, or with a trigger-happy idiot like you I’m dead. Get movin’,” and the last sentence sort of slurs into a yawn, but Angel must get the idea because he disappears from sight.

Now all he has left to do is dab on alcohol like a ‘specally good cologne, arrange the magazines in a convincing position and fall asleep on top of the cart, his legs dangling down. Easy.

So easy, in fact, that the next thing he knows is a click of a door unlocking. He snuffles noisily, inches his position slightly so his face lies against the cart’s hard plastic; it’s easier to fake sleep that way. His breathing’s nice and loud when the door opens.

“Hey, you. You work here?”

He keeps snuffling away, happily enough. Two cops, maybe? Not more than that but there must be more around within earshot.

“I guess this idiot’s been snoring his way through the whole raid. Stole a magazine to look at the dirty pictures- well, he probably can’t read.”

“Lusting after them white women,” somebody else says, in a mock high-pitched tone. “All right, get him cuffed and bring him down to the station, we’re done here.”

“Fine. Wake up, you-” at least he’s not being handled too harshly, the cop doesn’t seem thrilled to touch him. He sits up after a bare minimum of shoving.

“What’s your name, bud?”

“Janitor! Janitor-  _comprehende_?  _Americano_ ,” Tuco says with considerable eagerness, and offers up his stupidest smile. It’s one he’s practiced in mirrors. “No speaka English.”

“Oh christ, you’re one of those….”

They take him out to a squad car, him blathering cheerful Spanish at every step, and shove him inside. Could be worse, Tuco figures; he’s done Angel Eyes enough of a favour that he can probably count on a bailout. He listens to the engine start up with no small satisfaction.

Just as he's settling against the seat to recommence that nap, a familiar voice pipes up.

“All right. If you’re here, where’s Angel?”

“Baker?”

“One and the same. Now think about that question very carefully, because if you don’t have an answer by the time I round this next corner, you won’t live long enough to worry about getting arrested.”

“Back inside,” Tuco says immediately. “I left him in a broom cupboard.”

“Right. We’re going back to get him.”

“…so, you were a cop all along?”

“Good lord, no,” Baker says. “I’m only borrowing this squad car. We’ll use mine for the real escape.”

The fact that they get away with the operation scot-free says more about the damn improbability of anyone stealing a police car and then giving it back inside of two minutes than Baker’s street smarts, Tuco figures.

************

“You were following me,” Angel says, once they’re back at the house. He looks dead on his feet and Tuco doesn’t blame him. “Baker, if you ever do anything like that again, I will-”

“You’ll what?” Baker asks, in a jaunty, top-of-the-world fashion. His enthusiasm fades at Angel’s frozen glare; Tuco finds himself studying the interplay with genuine curiosity.

Angel turns his head, glances at him. “I will never go on a hunting trip with you again. Ever. Understood?”

“Angel, you wouldn’t- would he?”

Now they’re both staring at him.

“Yes. I think he would..."

“Okay, okay! I promise. But you have to admit, I came in handy.”

“You were not, and I don’t owe you a damned thing. You’re needlessly theatrical, it’s going to get you killed one of these days, and as for Tuco, my partner and I had it under control.”

(Tuco doesn’t like the notion, that he might be claimed as anyone else’s partner; but he does enjoy the way the words make Baker droop in his tracks.)

“…understood.”

“Good,” Angel says, casually wiping his knife clean on the cuff of his shirt. “Now go away. Don’t call me, I’ll call you.”

“I still say you need a better bodyguard.”

“I’ll take your opinion under advisement.”

“You really are awfully happy together, eh?” Baker asks. “Well. I guess I’d better just go and tell that sweet Blondie he ought to take up with me, since it looks like you two won’t be needing him any time soon…”

Tuco eyes Angel; Angel eyes him back.

_Baker's bluffing._

He doesn’t know what brought Angel to that conclusion, but to him it’s obvious enough- Blondie’s pushing up their value a little, reminding Angel the two of them have other options. They know each other well enough to trust the other’s play, even at a remove.

It’s a smart thing his partner’s doing, a good move. Maybe he wouldn’t have thought so this morning, but that’d been before realising he was still this desperate, that the mere chance to grab a little hard cash had made him stupid enough to stick around in a place long after his instincts had told him to leave. If they’d been smart and kept moving, they never would have been at risk in that raid in the first place.

Then again, he wouldn’t have found out that Angel is a gun-happy maniac, and that’s worth knowing. And Blondie’s coming back. He’s bound to. 

“Give him my best regards,” Angel Eyes says, languidly. “He’s welcome to a bowl of soup here whenever he likes.”

Tuco opens his mouth. Shuts it again. Years of habit are strong; they don’t tell people they’re partners, or the whole hustle doesn’t work…so he’d better not say anything. Blondie’s the one who’s always the most worried about secrecy, anyway.

“I’ll let him know,” Baker says.

He looks rather hurt when he goes.

***************

“Here, you’d better take this back,” Tuco says at dinner, pulling the remains of Angel’s stake from his pocket. So much for turning a profit; he’d blown through it rather freely, what with drinks and tips and prairie oysters.

“You might keep it for next time,” Angel says, in a distinctly abstracted way. Twice already, he’s dipped the spoon into his coffee cup instead of his soup bowl, sipped it without apparently noticing the change in flavour. 

“No, no.” If this is the way Blondie wants to play it, this is the way they’ll play it.

Though it proves an awfully hard thing, to sleep alone that night.


	12. boo in the night

“Help?”

Tuco doesn’t whisper it very loudly. Just audibly enough to attract Angel’s attention, should the man happen to be awake. The lack of response is just a trifle ominous. 

He's still sleepy and the sofa’s plush as ever. The film projector ought to take care of itself (and from what he can remember of the opening scenes, if it does chew up  _The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms_ that won't be much loss). Only trouble is, Angel Eyes appears to have fallen asleep atop of him.

If it was Blondie, he’d just shove his partner a bit, or yell to wake him up. He doesn’t entirely dare to do either, so…dropping off again isn't exactly an option, the trouble he’s having breathing. That’s probably what woke up up in the first place. With him lying horizontal and Angel having slumped over sideways, he’s in exactly the right position to serve as a full-body pillow and be drooled on. Be hard to move without being rather unkind to some rather delicate bits of anatomy. 

Though at least Angel isn't drooling on him. Sleeping very quietly, in fact; and that utter relaxation, the awareness of another’s comfort, does at least have its usual soothing effect on him. It’s a kind thing. To feel, to know for sure that even someone as tight and nervy as Angel Eyes can have a soft moment like this…Tuco pulls his hand up awkwardly, squeezes it in under Angel’s chest. Just enough leverage for him to catch a proper breath, if a shallow one. As long as he doesn’t mind his hand going to sleep-

he couldn't say how he knows. Angel’s not moved and the cadence of his breath hasn’t changed, but now the other man’s awake.

Well. That’s awkward, he hasn’t been snoring. So Angel probably knows he’s awake….and the thought occurs to him, that for all the sex dungeon gear and smoke and mirrors he’s yet to see Angel actually express interest in performing the act. Blondie was very reticent- hell, this man’s not straight, is he? Or the kind of straight that will top people he respects, and do god knows what to people he doesn’t. 

Fucking hell, who even knows they came here? And Blondie had been so anxious, that other night- maybe he’d known something-

“What’s wrong?” Angel demands. Sharply, urgently. Not after the fashion of a man who’s only just awoken. 

“I don’t know.” He lets himself whimper it. Might as well sound as vulnerable as he feels, if he can’t manage unconcerned. “Something frightened me.”

Angel gets off him, finally, and Tuco sucks in a huge grateful breath at last. That’s all he needed, really. 

He turns over a little, enough to protect himself when Angel comes back, and goes pleasantly to sleep again. 

********************  
“Intruders?” Susan says blankly, at breakfast. “Surely not.”

“It’s a possibility,” Angel Eyes growls, not looking the slightest bit happy. “Tuco woke up last night and says something unaccountable happened.”

If he’d known this was going to be such a disaster, he’d have 'fessed up then. Angel’s been running around the place all morning, anxious and paranoid and asking him any number of questions about what he thinks might have happened. That Angel has further picked up on the notion that he’s too frightened to tell the truth, is a distinctly awkward thing. He digs into the three-cheese omelet with rather less enjoyment than usual. 

“Maybe it was nothing. Maybe I heard a bird and it woke me up.”

“Better safe than sorry.” Angel says. “I’ve checked the whole estate as best I can. Nothing seems to be missing, but I’m certainly fretting.”

If this is what it’s like being rich, maybe he doesn’t want it after all. “Well. Then if I’m here and you’re here and so is everything else, are we good?”

“And I’ll do it all again after breakfast. This is not a state of affairs I’m comfortable with.”

Tuco very nearly pipes up then, to say that’s not fair. Today they’d agreed to have a trip out, so he can do a little shopping and pick up a few things he needs- it’d been easier to bring the subject up, now the subject of money has finally been introduced. Angel Eyes had been willing enough yesterday, or at least it’s seemed that way. Maybe that’s what this is about, if the man’s just stingy. 

“You know what it is? I was awake, I was nervous and couldn’t think because I couldn’t breathe. You fell asleep on top of me, so I woke you up. That’s all that happened.”

“He would not,” Susan says. Not with any particular heat in her voice, but with such certainty as to completely discount the possibility. “That’s not like Angel Eyes in the slightest.”

“He did,” Tuco says, rather grumpily. Lying’s fair in love and poker, but just contradicting him like that seems plain rude. “It was a pretty cute thing, too. His hair is very soft.”

He immediately wishes he hadn’t said that. Susan looks revolted; but Angel’s already harsh expression takes on so much anger, and simple self-disgust, that he has to wonder why. It can’t be the queer thing, can it? Susan must know already. (Last night’s more speculative concerns seem absurd, in the light of morning.)

“Okay, so don’t believe me. Go ahead and hunt for burglars all you please, but I told you the truth now.” Just to reinforce the point, he puts down his fork, crosses his arms. “Anybody can have a nightmare.”

“Including myself, evidently,” Angel Eyes mutters. He leaves the room without another word. 

Maybe it’s shallow of him, to be unhappy about this because he’s missing a day out- but damnit, there was a promise and it looks like it’ll be honoured in the breach. This kind of treatment, waiting on someone else’s sufferance, he’s lived a bare and risky life so he’d never have to endure that again. He’s not planning to start now. “Hey, Susan? If he’s going to be like this, would you let me borrow your car?”

“If he thinks it’s safe,” Susan says, with trustful loyalty. 

“Like hell. Fine. I’ll walk.” Tuco picks up his fork again, starts in on the eggs again with more determination than enjoyment. 

“No, don’t- don’t do that,” Susan says hastily. “He can get- a little paranoid, sometimes. He lost someone very dear to him once.”

“Who, Blondie?”

“…someone before then. And Blondie didn’t help his worries about that, not one little bit.”

"Out of the frying pan, into the fire.” Trading in one romantic for another, what marvelous luck he’s got. 

Susan puts down the spatula to glare at him. “Was that meant to be a joke?”

**********

“Hey, Angel? Look. I’m sorry.” 

“You have nothing to be sorry about,” Angel Eyes says, rather mulishly. (He’s right, but it still surprises Tuco to hear it.) “I’m the one who’s perturbed- and not by anything you’ve done, either. I shouldn’t have fallen asleep like that last night." 

"Angel, you nap all the time. What’s the problem?" 

 "Not when I-" Angel Eyes begins, cuts himself short. That's different. "Not when I’m not expecting to. Not by accident." 

 "I’ll remember that, next time you leave me in the lurch with Baker,” Tuco jokes; Angel scowls. He’s cute when he makes faces like that. Not like Blondie being so restrained all the time.

“I’m not inclined to trust very easily. Forgive me for saying this, but I didn’t think I trusted you like that." 

Fair enough, he wouldn’t. "Well, a man can’t help his instincts- but when you wake up, you go on not trusting me and I’ll go on not trusting you and we’ll be happy together, ok?" 

"You really do seem to think it’s that simple, don’t you,” Angel muses. He looks up again. “Exactly what have I done, to make you not trust me?" 

"At the moment, nothing except you said we were going out after breakfast, and we’re not going out yet,” Tuco says lightly. “Not to sound like a bored housewife, but I need a new safety razor. And a few other things." 

"There’s some in the linen cupboard upstairs." 

"Yeah, those are the kind Blondie uses. I like a different one- don’t think you can just swap me in for him, you know. We don’t work like that." 

There’s something very curious, about the look Angel’s giving him now. "Something wrong?" 

"Deja vu. Never mind, we’ll get going.”

He manages not to cheer, just about. 


	13. shopping trip

Keeping in well with your former lovers is, Tuco’s gathered, supposed to be odd behaviour, though he’s never really been sure why. 

You always might run into each other again; and where Blondie prefers to burn his bridges and start fresh, he’d rather stay on good enough terms to snag a warm bed or at least a sandwich if he needed one.

(It’s caused friction a couple of times, when they’ve parted ways temporarily to try their luck. He’ll come back from a frivolous, slapdash night and a pancake breakfast to find Blondie sore and peevish, and honestly he tries not to tell his partner how to play this, but it seems a waste. Not to say worrisome. All that bondage with complete strangers.)

Keeping in touch with your lover’s ex, now, even he has to admit that’s odd; but he’d gotten on real well with Penny. Well enough he might have tried a go himself, if not for a few small vitally important details. Him not giving a fig about light aircraft, her all-consuming passion. Her not being terribly interested in men, which had made more sense than not for a San Fransisco transplant who dresses the way she does. Okay for a fling, they weren’t real suited to anything serious.

They keep in touch, though. When he’s able to get together the money for the long-distance phone call. (“I hate getting letters, I feel like I have to respond and I don’t enjoy writing them. Phones are much better, if one of us gets bored we just hang up.”

Ha. He might have tried harder to brush up on aeronautics, at that.)

“Penny?  _Hola_ , remember me?”

(Besides him in the bed, Angel shifts; Tuco rests a hand on that fine soft hair, and the man seems to drop off into more restful sleep.)

“Oh, heya honey! It’s been ages since I heard from you, how are things getting on?”

“Fine, fine. Would you believe, I’m sneaking away from my millionaire lover to talk to you?”

A laugh, a proper laugh. No nervous giggling for her, Penny’s a big woman. “I would not. You’d be playing it too careful, to risk a stunt like that unless you were pretty sure you had ‘em hooked.”

She’s got him there. “Yeah, okay. We’re in the swankiest hotel I ever did see, wrecking sheets and ordering more room service than even I can handle. He’s having a little nap. Life’s pretty sweet, I’ll tell you that.” 

“Not bad, not bad. Boy, girl? Neither?”

“Oh, he’s got a mustache that he thinks puts mine to shame. It doesn’t, mind you.”

“Even if it did you wouldn’t admit it, you shameless  _encanto_.” (He’d taught her maybe a dozen words of Spanish, and she enjoys dropping them into conversations too much but hey, it’s more than Blondie does.) “So what, is this you saying you’re riding off into the sunset? Finally dumped the nightmare movie machine?”

“…not like that,” Tuco says, chuckling. “It’s kinky. Angel’s one of those guys who wants it both ways at once.”

(Okay, so he’s making that up. Whatever, he's drunk. The remains of six different kinds of cocktails on the tray, some tasting even worse than cheap tequila, he's happy enough to float and Penny knows him well enough not to take him too seriously in a chirpy mood like this- and say, maybe Angel Eyes would go for that. Worth trying whenever Blondie gets back, who knows?)

“Wowzie- nice. Don’t let him blow it for you- wait, that’s not what I meant- oh  _damn.”_

It takes a while, before either of them can stop laughing.

"I won’t." (He won’t.) "Took a while before he was willing to crack open the purse strings, but  _Dios mío_! Now that he is, we’re having such a blowout. Crazy clothes, filet mignon, the works- you know, it turns out that mignon is just bacon-wrapped steak? He even offered to buy me a new pack, but you can guess I said no to that.”

“Well, make the most of it. If it turns out this is his idea of a farewell present, make sure you’ve milked all the goodies you can out of it first.”

“Trust me, I’m way ahead of you. Saw my chance at this watch shop, a second-hand Rolex. Good enough I can wear it with him, bad enough I could get rid of it pretty easy if I needed to- but hey, I’m being selfish. How’s it going with Bernadette, is she still busy breaking your heart?”

“No- no, she’s not. I told her to go, actually. Life’s too short, to put up with someone who thinks you’re just a side attraction.”

“Uh-huh. You want I should be sorry? Or proud of you?”

“Fuck you. I’ll be proud of myself, thank you very much….no, it’s been rough. But I’m holding it together, you know I am. And work’s been great, we finally swapped out the clunker for a Learjet. If she isn’t the sweetest bird to ever hit tarmac…”

Tuco nods and keeps up an amused succession of Yes and Oh and  _Si, senorita_ for the next ten minutes, while Penny blathers. She does this, she can’t help it, but he doesn’t mind for once in a way. They know how to let each other monologue.

It’s so good. It’s everything he ever wanted, the price is one he’s more than willing to pay, and the only cloud on the horizon is that this is one bed and two of them and the only way he’s gonna be able to tell Blondie he didn’t lay hands on Angel Eyes, is if Angel does it first. Jeez, he doesn’t feel like waiting any longer. Forget going out for dinner tonight, they can just get down to business right here-

“-hang on a second,” Tuco says. “Somebody’s knocking.”

He’s not really sure what that’s about. If it’s Baker again he’ll slam the door right in the man’s face.

“Stop,” Angel Eyes says, suddenly sharp and hard in a discomfiting fashion. It only takes Tuco a moment to catch on, though; the hotel might be discreet, but if this is someone who Angel knows, that could get awkward. He rolls off the bed, grunts a little as he tucks himself out of sight. 

Footsteps. The click of a door handle.

“Did you miss me?”

“ _Blondie_!”

Tuco all but knocks Angel over, in his rush to the door; and just barely has the presence of mind to drag Blondie inside before hugging his partner tight. The time away hasn’t done him one bit of good, his partner's filthy and obviously hasn’t changed shirts in a while, but it doesn’t matter. Angel evidently doesn’t care either; he shoves his way in without so much as a word, black gloves everywhere and groping very eagerly.

“Ooof. I’ll take that as a yes.”

“Damn straight,” Angel Eyes says. There’s a slightly dangerous edge in his tone, that puts a sick feeling in Tuco’s stomach. He doesn’t want this to be awkward, not when everything was going so nice-

“Oh, I forgot! There’s a phone call for you, Blondie- well, I called her first but never mind. It’s Penny.”

“Why on earth would you call her?”

“Cos I said we were all three fucking,” Tuco says promptly.

That speechless silence that greets the statement, this is  _exactly_ what puts him off ever trying to tell the truth.


	14. fresh squeeze

“A road trip. That’ll be nice.”

Tuco’s much contented as he says it, and there’s no reason why he shouldn’t be. His partner’s home now (home? this huge hacienda?). Safe and sound. Cleaned up, busily letting Angel Eyes entice him with highway maps and guidebooks. By the time the mark’s chasing you, they’ve been well and truly hooked. Allowing for accidents-

“You know why I don’t trust you?” Susan asks, brandishing a dripping knife.

Like that, for instance. “Because I looked like I was replacing Blondie? Because you thought I was a gold-digger bastard who wanted to strip Angel’s carcass? The time I insulted you, by saying you’d made a chili so hot I couldn’t eat it? I mean, that one wasn’t my fault, it really isn’t-”

“….all right, every one of those at one time or another, but I’ve a different one troubling me at the moment,” Susan says, slicing the final orange in half. Leaving one half on the cutting board, she puts the other in the squeezer, presses down with steady perceptive pressure. “You seemed utterly thrilled about this shopping expedition, when Angel Eyes proposed it. Unsurprisingly.”

She’s so punctilious about her employer, Tuco reflects. Doesn’t even like casually calling him “Angel”. “Okay. I’m not denying I was- so what?”

“So you get back here three days later, with a second-hand watch and a trunk full of cheap polyester horrors. Three days away, when I know Angel Eyes had been intending at least a fortnight to spoil your hide something rotten- and suddenly you’ve changed your mind completely. Perfectly happy to let Blondie scatter all those plans to the wind. How am I supposed to know what to make of a changeable weathercock like you?”

“We-ell. It’s only fair. I’ve had Angel to myself for a while now…”

“Long enough I was almost believing that was it,” Susan says. “Just the pair of you together. If I thought that you could be trusted to stick around, I might not question so much.”

“Why shouldn’t I stick around? I’m cheaper to buy than Blondie.”

(He’s not, never has been; but loyalty to his partner makes him say it. There’s no need for Susan to hear what they’ve been through together; and some of it he’d rather not think on it himself.)

“Angel Eyes deserves better-”

she slaps down an orange half, much too hard; Tuco wipes a splash of juice off his face, thoughtfully licks it from his fingers.

“-better than two n'er-do-well spongers with an eye on how to bilk him.”

“So what, since when has deserving had anything to do with the world? Did Angel deserve to have this big house, while we were sleeping rough and starving?”

Susan goes white. More than he’d have guessed possible; but then she’s paler even than Blondie. Maybe it comes easy to a face like that.

“If you want me to know I’m lucky, don’t worry, I guessed. If you’re scared I’d leave him, I don’t have anywhere to go that’s better. And if you think I’d find a way to hurt him anyway, well…I’m too greedy and too smart, to want to do that. Okay?”

“It didn’t stop Blondie.”

Tuco shakes his head. “Blondie’s not greedy. Funny trait for a hustler, maybe a bad one, but he just isn’t.”

“Oddly enough, that’s what made me trust him,” Susan admits. “That complete and total disdain- oh, there were things he liked, his movies and what have you, but I could see that wasn’t where his heart was. Only then he leaves and comes back with you. So smugly self-satisfied that he'd flaunt his lover….and I said to myself, this was always an act. Well. Never mind, Blondie’s going to have to go some ways towards convincing me this time.”

“But that’s his problem. Not mine.”

“Maybe. I wish I knew how sincere you’re ever being.”

“How would you, when I don’t know myself?” Now that’s the sort of indiscreet truth that’ll make him wince, at three in the morning; he should have shut up long since- but underestimating danger isn’t one of his usual faults.“Can I have a cup of that?”

“Did it ever occur to you,” Susan says, in a tired voice. “That people might trust you more, if you didn’t make them so nervous with that constant greediness.”

“Sure, sure. You think I’d let it show anywhere I didn’t feel safe?”

“…you feel safe here.”

She repeats it back as if it’s a statement, not a question. Tuco shrugs. 

“If you promise not to tell Angel Eyes,” Susan says eventually. “He likes having the first glass.”

“Oh. Then you better pour that one first, then, and I’ll have the second.”

He can see she wasn’t expecting that resolution to her question. Either make a little betrayal or give up his desires, that’s what she had in mind; but for goodness sake, she’ll have to get up earlier than that if she wants to trick a hustler…

(the orange juice proves very nice indeed)


	15. chalked outline

"Make the house look lived in, you said," Susan points out, picking up the tray of breakfast dishes. "Ramirez seemed happy enough to try, when I told him there was a bucket of chalk in the garage."

"This isn't quite what I meant," Angel Eyes muses, peering out the French window (there is precisely one such in the whole house, positively bristling with alarms and traps for any intruder seeking an easy route inside. All quite invisible to the untrained eye, naturally). "A half-finished hopscotch. Perhaps a few modest drawings of clouds- he's gone rather overboard, chalking up the entire driveway."

 _"Parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus,"_ Susan retorts. 

He could repress the smile rising to his lips efficiently enough, but there doesn't seem any particular need (they have not shared the same house so long, without her being able to lob back the occasional overused aphorism). "Keep a sharp watch while I'm gone. If Blondie's played this out just to draw me away while a gang ransacks the place, I'll be deeply disappointed in him."

"You think he's as simple and bone-headed as that?"

"Bone-headed, possibly, but- I don't know that you could correctly describe Blondie as  _simple._ "

"Manco was," Susan says. In a tone that from another woman, he might describe as wistful. 

Before he's made up his mind whether to press the point, she's turned on her heel towards the kitchen. He might follow, but-

hmm. 

Instinct's leading him outdoors. He hasn't survived the profession this long by ignoring it. 

*******

It turns out there is a hopscotch after all, on the other side of the Eldorado. Shifting winds have already begun to disguise its thin white lines beneath a fine layer of sepia dust, the familiar desert tide. 

Blondie looks up from his sketchbook, hugging it close in a familiar gesture. Defensive. The man's refusing to be drawn on whether those road trip plans involve leaving this climate or state or nation.

It's been a long time, since he's ventured out into the unknown with neither acknowledged goal nor intended destination. Not since his mentor's training- no, earlier still. Trips out of Chicago with his father, and those hardly make for a pleasant comparison. He does not place the same trust in Blondie that he did Alma, nor anything like. And yet, in his  _inamorato's_ favor...

“Of course, Pablo was always better at this,” Tuco says.

The cardsharp's tongue is half out of his mouth, as he scrawls industriously. “I was the one who’d go out and find people who looked like they’d maybe pay a nickel, to see their portrait on the sidewalk.”

“Your first hustle?” Angel Eyes guesses.

“No, no…I had better ones than that in the cradle, but you couldn’t push Pablo too far. But he always liked this, it was something we shared. There you go,” Tuco says, adding one last flourished swipe to a chalked face. 

It’s lurid. Hasty. There’s too many colours applied to every part of the features, pink for cheeks and purple for eyes and a light sky blue for hair, and the linework’s not what you’d call competent; it doesn’t even achieve the status of a decent caricature.

Certainly not Blondie though, and Tuco's self-portraits all seem to be drawn in lurid orange. So by default…“I take it that’s supposed to be me?”

“Sure.”

“I’ll pay you that nickel, to stick to verbal insults.”

“Done,” Tuco says, very cheerful. “You go ahead and pay it back later, I think I like a rich man owing me a loan.”

Something drifts across the chalk monstrosity as he says it, a paper that Blondie’s let slip; Angel Eyes stoops and picks it up quickly. Now that’s much more like it. Charcoal, only half-finished, but artistic and considered and humorous not in the least.

“What’s that?” Tuco says, eying him curiously.

Angel Eyes crumples it in one hand, stuffs it in a pocket. (To look at later). “More trash, just like yours.”

He’s not sure what makes him do it. Maybe solely to see Blondie’s expression go wide and surprised like that…

"Are we still going?" his  _inamorato_ asks, looking him straight in the eye- and there is not an ounce of yield in that stony glare. He might cancel the whole trip right now and never hear a word of protest. 

Or not from him; but then, Tuco would. 

"As soon as you're ready," Angel says coolly. Not quite reasonable of him, given that he's the one who's held them up for two days. (It's taken that long, to arrange his absence with Rose without undue questions.)

But then Blondie knows full well that he doesn't have to be reasonable. 

Tuco doesn't (does he? he must)- looks between the two of them, frowns with his brows knit together. "You don't start on a trip with bad words, it's not lucky."

"Give us some better ones," Blondie says, lazily. 

"Picture's worth a thousand," Tuco says, rummaging around in his ever-present Duluth. Pops out with a Polaroid. "C'mon, I know how you like to pose- front of the car, huh?"

The wavering, sullen anger on Blondie's face dissolves into exasperated amusement; he obligingly pulls himself up on the Cadillac, starts undoing shirt buttons. "You tried this one on Angel yet?"

"He doesn't like his picture taken," Tuco says, shrugging. "So I didn't."

Simple as that. Maybe an innuendo, maybe not- though the photo Tuco hands him next minute, seems infinitely revealing. Photographic subject smirking insouciantly in a beefcake pose. Ready to hit the open road, self-reliant, solitary. 

Revealing nothing at all about the picture taker, naturally. And if there's anything to add zest to their negotiated truce, Angel thinks, it's the realisation of just what he hasn't been looking for all this time...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I may have got carried away with enthusiasm for this B&W sketch by inwardscreams on Tumblr: https://thatdeepandlovelydark.tumblr.com/post/184375875860/as-promised-id-post-the-whole-thing-next-time
> 
> cos maybe Tuco's photo doesn't look *precisely* like that, but...*grins* something like


End file.
